


When the Lights

by SweetSamOfMine (AudreeJo)



Series: Olivia [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Character Background, Comedy, Cutesy, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Gen, Happy, Male-Female Friendship, Original Character(s), Platonic Relationships, Protective Sam Winchester, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreeJo/pseuds/SweetSamOfMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Liv ends up in the ER because of a minor injury on the job, she finds herself being questioned by two strange men who turn out to be the Winchesters. From there a chain of events unfolds that leads to an unlikely and semi-reluctant friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to show how my OC, Liv, met the Winchesters so here we are! I may turn this into a full case fic if I can manage it, but really the interactions of the characters are what matter. More chapters will come.

_Not the best start,_ _Liv_ , she thought to herself as she sat on the edge of a hospital bed with her legs dangling off the side. She was barefoot because the nurse had asked her to remove her shoes, expecting her to cuddle up, lean back, and relax for a bit. The nurse was wrong, though. Liv had refused to even change into a gown. Losing the shoes was all she’d concede. She wasn’t staying the night, and the hospital would let her go one way or another. _It’s just a bump on the head._

“Ma’am, the doctor will be in shortly to check you out and make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

“Thanks. I’m sure I’m fine-”

“We have to make sure. You were nearly unconscious when you’re boyfriend brought you in-”

Liv cut the nurse off with a burst of laughter, then blanched and held her head. _Jesus! That was really a bump on the head._ She grimaced, “That was not my boyfriend.”

“Either way,” the nurse said sternly, the hand gripping her clipboard in a fist on her hip. “You aren’t leaving until we’re sure you’re alright.” She turned abruptly and charged out of the room, leaving the door open.

Liv sat up straight with a start at the shift in the nurse’s tone, a slight smirk beginning to form on her face. She felt sufficiently scolded, but it kind of felt good. She spent a lot of her time on her own so feeling someone’s concern for her was nice, even if the lady was paid to do it.

Just then, two men in navy blue suits entered the room. It caught her off guard because, for one, she wasn’t expecting to see anyone other than the doctor, and for another, both men were incredibly good looking. The one who entered first, with a swagger in his step that was obvious just in the few feet he walked into the room, had short, manicured hair and bright eyes. The other, who followed close to the first’s side, was impressively tall and broad and had nearly shoulder-length hair. He seemed much more serious than his partner.

“Good evenin’, ma’am,” the one with short hair said with a grin, flashing a badge Liv didn’t get a chance to actually see before it was stowed back in his front pocket. “We’re just going to ask a few questions about what happened tonight.” The tall one stood a bit off to the side and nodded a greeting toward Liv.

Great, Liv thought. She had only just started this case and was already having to lie to the police.

_Really not the best start._

“Okay,” Liv nodded to show her cooperation. She had deterred officers before, so this shouldn’t be too hard, especially since she was seemingly the victim. She just wasn’t looking forward to having to think quick on her feet with a possible concussion blurring her brain.

Liv grabbed a bit of her hair and started twirling it in her fingers. “But I don’t know how much help I will be. And I have such a headache.” She added a higher tone than what was usually present to her voice . She noted that when some men heard a girl speak in a high pitched voice, they were less likely to take her seriously, and she wanted to be taken the least bit serious as possible and deemed a waste of time so these two would move on. Though she also noted that it would be sad to see them go. They were both so pretty.

'Bright-eyes' had a disarming smile which he was clearly trying to use for that purpose on Liv, so she pretended to be disarmed. That seemed to play to his good side and loosened him up. He shot a wink at her and said, “We’ll be quick.”

_Yeah I’ll have you guys out of here in no time._

“What’s your name?”

She smiled and leaned towards him a bit, “Olivia Loftlan.”

“Cute! I like that.”

The serious one stepped forward, interrupting his partner’s attempts at flirting. “So you were at Golden Gate Park tonight.”

Liv nodded.

“Had a date or …?” 'Bright-eyes' kept the flirtation going.

“No, sir. I’m not seeing _anybody_ right now.”

He raised his brows. _Oh, this is going to be too easy,_ she thought.

“So you were alone?” Interjected his partner, with a sigh. The other guy seemed to have no patience for this kind of behavior on the job.

Liv nodded again.

“Why were you at the park so late?” he continued.

“Is it a crime to go for a walk by the lake late at night?” She feigned a clueless face, tossing the lock of hair in her hand over her shoulder.

“No, but one might say it’s an odd decision, specifically at _that_ time,” the shorter one added.

“I supposed…?”

“I mean, you know the stories about that part of the park, by the statue, right?” He was trying to lead her to reveal something, and maybe if she hadn’t been a hunter it would have worked. But as it was, Liv _was_ a hunter so this question sent up about 15 red flags.

She dropped her flirtatious facade and narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you guys even care that I got knocked out at the park? That’s where these questions are headed right?”

The shorter one side-eyed the one with the long hair.

Liv frowned. “Uh… who did you guys say you were with again?”

“The FBI, ma’am.”

Liv raised her eyebrow at the taller one with a smirk. _Not with that haircut, you’re not._ He returned her scrutiny with a scrunched up brow. “And why does the FBI care about the statue at Stow Lake?” she asked, not breaking eye contact with the giant.

“Why won’t you give a straight answer about what you were doing there?” said the other, stepping between her gaze and his partner, looking annoyed for the first time.

“Show me your badges.” They both extended their badges toward her. 'Bright-eyes' flipped his closed as Liv leaned in to look closer and almost started questioning her again, but Liv cut him off. “Uh, no I wasn’t done. Hand it over.”

The men in suits exchanged looks. The tall one, with his still extended and unflipped, handed his badge to her. The other reluctantly did the same with a roll of his eyes.

_I’m not so cute anymore, am I?_

“‘Agent Steven Perry’ and ‘Agent Neal Schon’…?” she read aloud.  Her eyes darted from one to the other, as amusement broke across her face. “So.. you’re the lead singer of Journey and you’re the lead guitarist? This is so cool! Can you guys break me off a few bars of 'Lovin’ Touchin Squeezin’ before you continue asking me about Stow Lake instead of how I got injured?”

There was a bit of facepalming and head shaking from the men in front of her.

Liv burst out laughing again, only to end up scowling in pain like the first time. _Ouuuuch! Dammit!_ “You aren’t FBI,” she said, flatly, holding her hand to her forehead.

After another pause the tall one burst out with, “Dean, I told you, you have to stop making IDs that are so matchy matchy!”

“Shut up!” the one called Dean shouted. “And ‘matchy matchy’? Seriously? Be more of a girl, Sam.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Who the hell are you guys?” Liv demanded, though she was incredibly entertained watching the two bicker.

“I’m Sam Winchester, this is my brother Dean. We’re here to check out some of the oddities happening out at Stow Lake and we know you weren't just out by the statue taking a walk. We need ans--”

“ _Winchester_ ,” Liv said, distantly. “I feel like I’ve heard that name before.” The boys seemed jarred by this. “Wait! So you guys are looking into the lake, too? Are you hunters?”

Dean stared a little wide-eyed at her, then looked over at his brother. Sam shrugged at him. “Uh… yeah?” he answered.

“Me too!”

“What is going on in here?” All three of them were startled by the booming voice that came from an angry doctor.

“Uh, this is our friend,” --Dean glanced sideways at Liv, momentarily forgetting her name--”Er...Olivia!” He patting Liv on the shoulder. Clearly being arrested for sneaking into an ER and impersonating an officer was not on his agenda for the night. Liv went along with the story and smiled up at the doctor, nodding. “We’re just here, checkin’ on her.”

“You’ll need to wait in the waiting room,” barked the doctor. “Only patients are allowed back here!”

“Of course,” Sam said, tugging Dean along. “We’re sorry.”

“So you guys’ll be in the waiting room, then?” Liv shouted as the Winchesters tried to make their exit. There were a lot of questions she now had for them and there was no way it was fair for them to ring-and-run. They paused in the doorway, slightly confused.

“Sure thing,” Dean responded, a little forced, and then they were gone with the door shutting behind them. 

“Your friends sure do dress nice,” said the doctor in a much sweeter tone than before.

Liv nodded awkwardly in agreement.

 

****

 

“...and it’s only minor if it is one at all, but someone needs to keep their eye on her for the night just to be sure.” One of the nurses was explaining Liv’s status to the Winchesters even though Liv was standing right there. Dean looked unbelievably put out, but Sam seemed to fake “concerned friend” pretty well. Liv was thankful, but it was unnecessary

“Alright, got it,” Dean said to the nurse. She didn’t seem convinced and Dean didn’t care. He turned to Sam. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll make sure she’s alright,” Sam assured the nurse, before turning to Liv. “Do you need a ride or do you have a car here?”

“My car is still at the park, actually.”

“Oh no,” interjected the nurse. “It’s probably best if she doesn’t drive tonight.”

Dean groaned. The nurse shot him a hard look.

“Have you seen a kind of stocky guy with curly, dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, and glasses around the waiting room lately?” Liv asked the nurse.

“The man who brought you in?”

“Yeah, his name is Ives Driskel.”

“No, I haven’t seen him up here since he checked you in. Sorry, dear.”

Now Liv groaned.

“Does that mean he just took off?” Sam asked in a disapproving tone.

“He tends to do weird stuff like that. There’s no telling where he is.” She sighed like being abandoned at an ER was a common occurrence. “I’ll call him--”

“No, we’ll take you to your car,” Sam declared, placing his hand on her phone to cover the screen. He shook his head. “It doesn’t sound like you can really trust this guy.”

Liv paused to appraise this tall stranger. _Okay, maybe this guy isn’t pretending to be concerned. That’s pleasant._ She ended up nodding.

The nurse pointed at Sam to get his attention. “Don’t let her drive. And she probably shouldn’t do much reading or any complicated tasks until she rests.” He nodded kind of like he was being scolded, Dean gave a sarcastic thumbs up in the background, then slipped out the door. They followed him to the parking lot.

“Could she not see me? Why did she only address you guys?”

“That was weird,” Sam replied. Dean kept trudging through the lot towards his car. He clearly had not signed up for this shit.

“And what kind of ‘complicated tasks’ does she think I’m going to do in the middle of the night?” Liv jeered.

Dean snickered.

_Ugh, gross. Is this guy for real?_

“Anyway,” --she popped Sam on the shoulder as they went-- “I really do feel fine, but as it is now, yes, I need a ride. If you guys don’t mind? I really can call Ives if it’s too much trouble.”

Sensing Dean was about to suggest she do that, Sam cut him off before he could start just as they arrived at the Impala. “We’ll take you.”

“Holy _shit_ , this is your car?”

“Hmm, guess this chick ain’t all bad,” Dean conceded. “Hop in.”

 

*****

“Who is this Ives, then? He your hunting partner?” Dean asked Liv via the rearview mirror as they sped down Geary Boulevard on their way back to Golden Gate Park. Dean seemed to be taking it personal that Ives had left Liv for him to deal with.

“On this job, yeah.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t really have a partner. I work different jobs whenever I get a call. I have a lot of different contacts that keep me busy.”

This thought seemed to horrify Dean. “How do you know you can trust ‘em all?”

Liv laughed. “I have my ways. I trust them all to at least keep me alive. Now, whether or not I can depend on them for a ride home, that’s a different story.”

“Clearly.”

“Ives is really not a bad guy, he’s just… offbeat. He probably got distracted by some new innovative idea that struck him and had to get back to his laptop to work on it.”

“Well, if I were you,” Sam began, turning back to face Liv, “I’d find someone to work with who wouldn’t get distracted while I was injured in the ER next time.”

“Touche,” Liv sighed. “So you guys are here working this case, but you don’t seem like you’re locals and I take it you aren’t really into networking, huh?”

“Not really,” replied Sam.

“More like hell no!” Dean spat.

“Then how did you guys end up here?”

“We keep tabs on stuff across the country. Golden Gate Park is the most visited public park in the nation and there are all kinds of legends of hauntings through each part. The most famous being the Lady of Stow Lake.” Sam leaned his elbow over the back of the seat as he explained what he had researched. He talked with his hands a lot. This made Liv smile. “Around Halloween it’s normal for people to come around and try to test out some of the urban legends to scare themselves, so there was an uptick of police reports surrounding the lake.”

“But since it was Halloween the police haven’t been taking many of the complaints seriously,” Liv added.

“Exactly. Until people started dying. Which is why we’re here.”

“And how did you guys know to question me about the Lake?”

“Well, the legend and ‘survivor’ accounts all emphasize a specific time in the evening for when the Lady ‘visits’--”

Dean finished Sam’s sentence. “So since we knew the time of night, we turned our scanner on to see if we could catch anything on the radio waves. Not long after we did we heard a park security guard radio about yet another accident happening with some ‘kids’ messing with the statue. Our scanner picked it up, and boom. Didn’t take much time to pin-point the nearest ER, then we headed out.”

“Impressive.” And Liv meant that.

“Speaking of, what exactly happened to send you to the ER?” Sam asked.

“I really don’t know,” Liv said, screwing up her face confusedly. “I literally just got into town today. Me and Ives met up at the park just to scope things out and before I knew it, I had this throbbing pain in my head, then I woke up in Ives’ car on the way to the ER with blurred vision.”

“Well, I guess this gives us a starting point,” Sam said.

“Glad I could be of service!” Liv quipped, with a grin. “Be careful boys, this is how networking starts.”

Sam grinned back.

“Hey Olivia--” Dean interjected.

“Actually, most everyone just calls me ‘Liv.’”

“Yeah, I’m good with ‘Olivia.’”

Liv and Sam raised their eyebrows at one another.

“Which side of the park is your car at?” Dean asked.

“The South side, off Lincoln. Oh, dude, you just missed the turn.”

“Dammit! There’s all these one way streets! I hate this city.”

“San Francisco is my favorite city! It’s the best, you just have to get used to it --No, go down that street. There!”

“Stop being a back seat driver!”

“Well, perhaps you should try driver-seat driving, just a suggestion.”

Sam was laughing.

When they pulled up next to what Liv pointed out as her car --a little charcoal, compact car Dean immediately called a “mom car”-- Sam hopped out of the Impala with Liv before she could thank the Winchesters for helping her out. She hesitated with her door between them still ajar, a quizzical look on her face. Sam shut his door.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“Yeah, Sammy! What’re you doin?” Dean shouted from the driver’s seat.

“The nurse said she can’t drive, Dean,” Sam explained loudly so his voice carried through the open car door.

Dean groaned.

“Really, I’m fine. The nurse said it was just to be safe and there is probably nothing wrong…” she trailed off, watching Sam just stare at her with a furrowed brow. “I supposed if you guys wanted to kidnap and murder me you’ve already had your chance?”

With a chuckle, Sam nodded. “I just wouldn’t feel okay leaving you to drive.”

“I just wanna get back to the hotel to relax and have a _beer_ ,” grumbled Dean to himself, yet not-so-under his breath.

Sam face palmed.

“I arrived in town today and never got a room so” --Liv glanced into the Impala to see a cranky Dean miming banging his head against the steering wheel-- “uh, why don’t we just go back to your hotel and I’ll get one there. That way you can put Dean straight to bed as soon as possible.”

“You hear that, Dean?” Sam shouted through Liv’s still-open door. “Go on back. We’ll meet you there.”

The Impala roared to life, drowning out more Dean grumbles, and Liv slammed the door shut. There was still a dull ache in her head, but she knew she was feeling better and better because she was able to laughed to her full ability without grabbing her forehead. Liv handed her keys to Sam. “Really, you didn’t have to do this. I could have managed.”

“It’s no big deal.”

Sam adjusted the driver’s seat of Liv’s car to accommodate his mile-long legs and hit the ignition. “Lights” by Journey blared from the speakers. Sam sat back and turned slowly over to Liv with a smirk. She returned it by raising her eyebrow at him playfully and shrugging.

“So you really like Journey, huh?”

She nodded. “And I always turn on ‘Lights,’ when I come into San Fran. They wrote it about this city. Just feels right.”

Liv reached to turn the volume down as Sam pulled out of the parking spot, and  they were off. She felt fidgety but she wasn’t sure why because Sam seemed to naturally put her at ease. The lights of the city shined by as they drove. The boys had chosen a dinky Victorian style hotel off of Sutter so it would take about twenty minutes to get through town from where she was parked. She spoke up to fill what she feared was an awkward silence.

“You take pity on strangers with head trauma often?”

“Not specifically victims of head trauma,” Sam replied, amused. “But I know a thing or two about that so...”

“Care to elaborate?”

Sam side-eyed her with a smirk. “Not really.”

“ _Mysterious_.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’ve only known you for a few hours so I’ll take your word on that.” There was a brief awkward moment until Liv ended it again. “So, Sam. Is that short for Samuel, Samwise, Samwell?”

“It’s just Sam. I was named after my grandfather.”

“Awe, that’s sweet! So was I --well-- kind of. My middle name is Sydney after my Grandpa, whose name is Sid.”

Sam didn’t think it was very sweet that he was named after Samuel. He smiled at her anyways. She didn’t need to know that. Clearly being named after Sid made her happy. “So you close to your grandfather?”

“Yeah, I really am!” Liv’s voice brightened. “He’s great. He’s my mom’s dad, and a police officer in his younger days. My parents lived in New York and ran this little hostel in Time Square, but they split up when I was really young and my dad remarried pretty quickly. When Mom got cancer, she couldn’t stay in NYC because she couldn’t work, so she and I moved to Dalhart, Texas to live with Grandpa in basically the oldest house in the world. Mom died when I was three, I barely remember a real parent who wasn’t my Grandpa Sid.”

Sam was never this up front with people about his past so he wasn’t sure if it was too meddlesome to ask her to go on or not, but he tried it anyways. “Did your dad ever come around?”

“When I was in High School his second wife left him and he insisted that I come back to NYC and let him put me in a private art school out there. He offered to pay if I stayed with him and tried for a scholarship to a University. It was his weird way of trying to make up for not giving a shit about my dying mother or about me for the first half of my life, I guess.” --Liv shrugged. There was only a slight feel of bitterness in her voice, and from what Sam judged based on how her father sounded, not enough bitterness-- “Grandpa was always really supportive of me so he encouraged me to go because he knows how I love the arts.”

“Oh, so you’re an artist?” Sam sounded impressed.

“Well,” Liv chuckled. “I dance. I love the stage. I couldn’t paint my way out of a devil’s trap.”

“That’s still really cool, though. The stage?”

“Broadway. I guess it’s in my blood, I don’t know. I never remembered living there as a kid, but I always wanted to go back. Grandpa was so great about it.”

“That must be nice.”

“You’re family not so supportive?”

“You might say that.”

“Can I assume you don’t care to elaborate on that either?”

Sam amusedly raised his eyebrow at her.

“Okay, keep your secrets then,” Liv replied with a playful tone.

“I grew up in the life,” Sam said flatly. This girl had trusted him when she didn’t have to, and she seemed genuinely interested to know about him. Maybe he owed her a little background. He could be vague. “My mom died when I was a baby and Dad raised me and Dean to be hunters. I went to college for a stint but it didn’t last. I ended up leaving to do a job with my brother and we’ve been hunting together ever since.”

“I’m sorry about your mom. I mean, when I lost Mom, I was still so young I barely remember her, but it’s still hard.” Sam nodded silently so Liv, who was surprised to hear him open up at all, decided to change the subject quickly. “But college, huh! Which one, and did you have a major or--”

“Stanford. I wanted to be a lawyer.”

Liv’s jaw hung open for a second. “Wow, brainiac!”

This was something Dean had called him many times as a cut-down but he could tell Liv didn’t use it the same way. His cheeks turned red under her gaze. He wasn’t used to this kind of attention but it felt kind of nice. He cleared his throat awkwardly and then tried to turn attention away from himself. “So how did you get into all of this?”

“Well, I too made it to college for a stint, but like you, it didn’t last. My father was killed in my second year and it was...difficult.”

“Like he was murdered?”

“Yeah. It was a demon.”

“Wow. I’m so sorry Liv.” Sam was sincere but not surprised. There weren’t many hunters he knew whose family hadn’t been destroyed before entering this way of life. Not many of them chose it lightly, if they chose it at all.

“Thanks,” Liv said. And she was sincere, too, though Sam could tell it no longer broke her up, if it ever did. “I mean,” she continued, “it was traumatic at the time even though my father and I were never close. Emotionally or geographically speaking. But I just knew something was up with the circumstances surrounding his death, so I started digging. I had watched Grandpa work cases my whole life, even if they were stupid, small town things, so I went with my instincts and what I thought he would do. I discovered there was a lot more to the world than I had originally thought.”

“That’s rough.”

“Yeah. Dad had made a deal. Ten years before, he could tell his wife was losing interest because his business was slipping, so he made a deal to stay successful to keep her around. Obviously it did not work.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah sometimes there just isn’t an easy fix, imagine _that_!” Liv rolled her eyes.

_Okay, there’s the bitterness._

“He knew he was on his way out. He had changed his will a few months before. Named me beneficiary of the business and a semi-lofty inheritance.”

“The business and money he made a deal for, he left to you?”

“Yeah. I’m telling you, Sam. He wasn’t a great guy. I guess if I hadn’t discovered how he had really died --that there was a demon deal involved-- it would seem like a generous thing. But it just felt gross.”

“So what did you do?”

“After basically having an existential crisis and questioning everything I’ve ever known--”

“Naturally--”

“--I couldn’t go back to school. Everything seemed… erroneous? I don’t know, I just couldn’t …. you know?”

“It’s definitely not something you can bounce back from easily.”

“So I got a little obsessed and started researching everything I could and I stopped going to classes and kind of went a little Leo in the Aviator --without the weird pee jars. But! The business kept on going like usual under the management of my dad’s best friend, Bernie, and the inheritance was transferred over to me as well, so I had all this disgusting deal money and an entire new outlook on this terrifying world and felt totally useless.” Liv sighed, pulling her brows together. “So I just left New York.”

“You left? Alone?”

“Yup, and I decided if Dad wanted me to benefit from his deal then I was going to use it as a way to hopefully help clueless people like pre-existential-crisis me from having to go through what I did. I took the little knowledge I had, a few weird urban legends leads I wanted to check out, my car, a suitcase, and my checkbook on the road and I’ve been learning everything I could ever since. That was about -- _Jesus_ _!_ _-_ \- nine years ago. That’s why I network like I do. At first, it was the only way I could stay alive, throwing myself into situations like I did.”

“Wow!”

“I know,” Liv replied with an embarrassed tone. “Sometimes I look back on how I started, knowing what I know now, and cringe. I don’t know how I survived most of that shit.”

Sam chuckled. “No, but even being brought up doing this stuff, you still feel that way when you look back on early cases.”

“Yeah? So what’s your dad like? It must have been nice having someone to guide you.”

Sam’s expression told Liv she was treading into unwelcome territory. Her face fell.

“My father is dead,” Sam said, simply.

“Oh. I--” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I should know by now not to ask too many questions when I meet new hunters.”

“It’s okay, I brought it up.”

Thankfully they pulled into the hotel parking lot behind the Impala before it got too awkward. Liv unclicked her seatbelt --she noted how weird it was to sit in the passenger seat of her own car-- and hopped out. Sam did the same. He tossed her the keys from across the car and she headed to the trunk to grab her bags.

Instead of an arsenal in her trunk, Liv had an entire closet, complete with a section for what looked like costumes. There were weapons tucked here and there, but for the most part it was clear that she very much lived out of her car. And she very much emphasized camouflage, deception, and adaptation to work her cases rather than force and intimidation.

She reached for two medium sized pieces of luggage, hesitated, then also grabbed a small cooler, and turned to head into the hotel.  If she had known Sam was standing right next to her with his arm outstretched, waiting to help her with her bags, she probably wouldn’t have run right into him and dropped it all. The luggage was fine, but the cooler cracked open and started leaking on the pavement.

“Aghh!” she yelled, involuntarily.

“Sorry!” Sam bellowed, grabbing up the dropped bags before the liquid from the cooler could get at them. Liv went to the cooler with a confused look on her face. “Um… what is that?” Sam pointed at the small, silvery, glistening pieces of something sitting in the mostly melted slush that clearly used to be ice.

“I’m not sure,” Liv replied, approaching it with caution. “It’s Ives’ cooler.”

“Was he icing down bullets?”

She bent over and picked one up. It was shaped like a silver bullet shell, but was completely hollow, and there was nothing inside. She rolled her eyes with an amused groan.

“Oh my God,” she scoffed.

“What?”

“I told him this would never work, but he was so stuck on the idea.” She held the hollow shell up for Sam to see. “Holy water bullets.”

“What?”

“Like ice cubes.”

“But wouldn’t it melt and break and keep the gun from firing--”

“That’s what I told him--”

“And couldn’t he just use rock salt instead--”

“That’s what I _told him!”_

“This is the guy that’s supposed to have your back on this case?”

Liv shrugged. “Guess it’s a good thing I met you.”

“Sammy!” Both Liv and Sam turned to look. A disgruntled Dean stood with his arms in an exaggerated _what-the-hell-are-you-doing_ shrug under the dim light of the Hotel entrance across the lot. They shut the trunk and headed in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since they're all in San Francisco for the same case, Liv asks if the Winchester will work with her, which leads to the boys doing things a bit differently than they're used to.

It was too early to be getting a knock at the door, so when Dean went to answer it, he was already wearing a sour face, but when he found Olivia standing on the other side, he didn't even try to hide his vexation.

“Morning!” she cheered, juggling three to-go cups of coffee. “I come bearing gifts!”

“What are you--? How did you find our room?”

Liv cocked her eyebrow. “Well, it wasn’t rocket science, _Steve Perry_. I asked the front desk.” She shifted the cups uncomfortably. “Plus ‘Smoke On the Water’ is shaking the hallway wall.” Dean’s hands were still on the door frame and door, making no attempt to help her with the coffee.

“Who is it?” came Sam’s voice from within.

“It’s that chick from last night,” Dean shouted back, still staring at Liv in irritated surprise.

“It’s _Liv_ ,” she reminded him.

“Oh, right, Olivia.”

She shifted uncomfortably again. “So... can I come in?”

Sam’s face appeared at the door a second later. “ _Yes_ ,” he proclaimed, opening the door so she could slip past Dean’s unwelcoming gaze. He grabbed two of the cups from her on her way in. “Are these for us?” he asked.

“Yeah, I figured I put you two out so much last night, I should try to make up for it.” She sat against the bed nearest the door, facing Sam who was turning the booming music off.

“ _Hah_ , yeah,” Dean agreed, carrying his newly claimed coffee and sitting at the hotel table across the room where his laptop awaited him. 

“This wasn’t necessary,” Sam said, cutting off Dean’s quip, as he leaned against the wall by the bathroom. “But thanks.”

“Also,” she continued, “I was hoping since you guys are here, and I’m here, and… probably Ives is still somewhere, maybe we could all tackle this case together?” Liv heard Dean slam his coffee down behind her. She grimaced at Sam who looked just as embarrassed by Dean’s behavior as he had the night before. She turned towards Dean. “C’mon, man. I’m going to keep working this one anyways, so if you guys are still working it, doesn’t this just make sense?”

Dean glowered, but he didn’t argue.

“Dean, she’s got a point.”

“Fine!” Dean groaned. “But don’t get in our way. We get a lead, you follow. Got it?”

Liv smirked at him. “Only if that rule goes both ways.”

“Hey sister, you asked to work with us,” Dean said with a shrug, eyes hopping back to his laptop screen, haughtily. “I’m just givin’ you my stipulations.”

“And if I break ‘the rules’?” she mocked.

“I’m out.”

"Is he always this testy in the mornings?” she asked Sam.

“Not just in the mornings,” Sam jabbed. He saw his brother side-eye him.

That’s when Liv’s phone dinged with a text notification.

“Oh my God, _finally!_ ” she exclaimed.

“What?” Sam inquired, moving to look over Liv’s shoulder, acting overly interested in the text to keep from acknowledging Dean’s distaste for his last joke.

“It’s Ives! I he just responded.”

“You couldn’t get ahold of him all last night?”

“Not a word till now.” She texted feverishly.”He knows I’m mad so he’s been putting off talking to me.” The pleasant face she wore a few moments before slowly twisted into anger. Sam and Dean exchanged looks. “Oh, he’s calling me, do you guys mind if I--?” They both held their hands up in surrender, so she ducked out of the room with a nod. Before the door shut they could hear her shout, “How nice of you to finally check in, _jackass_!”

Dean realized in horror that he was actually amused, but he stifled any laughter he may have shown. This girl was annoying and he didn’t want her around, and that was his story and he was going to stick to it come Hell or high-water.

“This is gonna be a _long_ job,” Dean sighed.

“Dude, you haven’t even tried to be nice to this girl,” Sam countered.

“I said we could work together, didn’t I?”

“She’s not that bad, you should give her a chance.”

“A chance for what?” Dean’s voice went up an octave. “Why do you care if I like her?”

“I’m just saying, the job will probably be a lot easier if you were nicer to her.”

“You gotta crush on this girl?”

“No!” Then Sam’s voice was an octave higher.

_“Sammy?”_

“Dean, I just met her last night. There’s been no time to even-- This isn’t about having a crush!”

“Then what’s it about?”

“Manners?”

Dean crossed his arms skeptically.

“I just think you being more polite would make this case go more smoothly.”

The door was thrown open and Liv stormed in in a huff. Both boys froze, awkwardly playing off the fact that they had just been talking about her. Dean dove back into his laptop while Sam had a hard time figuring out what to do with his hands as she caught him in the middle of a large gesture, so they fell unnaturally to his hips to where it nearly looked like he was standing like a superhero. It was not smooth, but luckily Liv didn’t notice as she was so frustrated from her conversation with Ives.

“Sorry about that,” said Liv, closing the door behind her.

“No big deal, it’s fine.” Sam cleared his throat to bring his voice down. “What did Ives have to say for himself?”

“Well he’s very sorry, apparently, and he had every intention of coming back for me, but he got a call, while in the waiting room, that one of his old partners was just South of the Bay Area. So he took off.”

“Why?” Dean bellowed. He still blamed Ives for why Liv was in his life.

“The girls had some stuff to give him for some new gadget he’s developing.” Liv shrugged. It was clear she was exasperated by the whole thing.

“Hope it’s a better development than the ice-bullets,” spurned Sam.

“I didn’t ask what it was,” Liv chuckled. “But he met them in Palo Alto, Sam. Just by your _Alma mater_.”

Dean looked from Liv to Sam and back, confused. _Ice bullets? Stanford? What the Hell was going on here?_

“Well you two sure know a thing or two about the other,” accused Dean.

Sam’s cheeks reddened in distress.

“Hey, if you had offered to drive my car for me last night, you too could have experienced the spectacle of Ives’ bad inventions. Look what you missed out on.”

Liv was joking, but it was Sam who Dean continued to eye skeptically. Sam tried to ignore him.

“Anyways, he’s on his way back into town now,” Liv continued. “And to make it up to me he said he’s in on this job and he offered to do all the research if we want.”

“That may be all we’d trust him to do, at this point,” snarked Sam, sidestepping Dean’s stern gaze.

“Right,” she agreed, taking a gulp of her coffee. “So let’s get organized. What’s the next step in the case, boss?” She raised her eyebrow ironically at Dean.

“We were going to go to the park and ask around about the legend,” he replied. “Play it up like we’re investigating a hoax, or something.”

“Oh, investigating again? So agents?”

Dean puffed out his chest defensively. “Yeah, what’s wrong with that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Liv teased. “It didn’t really work out for you guys last night.”

“So what tipped you off about us? Was it just the IDs.”

“No, it was this one’s hair.” She pointed up at Sam’s lovely locks.

_“Hah!”_

“It’s too long. No FBI agent has hair like that.” Sam brought his hands up to his tresses as if he were afraid they were about to take them away. “Don’t get me wrong,” she clarified. “I dig the hair, honestly. But you’ve gotta play to your strengths. Otherwise, if you run into anyone who knows anything, you’re automatically on blast.”

“I think we’ve done okay so far without your advice--”

“Dean, you can do FBI. Granted, Sam seems to be better at questioning people, but you look the part. So make Sam something else that fits his look.”

“A girl?”

Liv rolled her eyes. “Are you sure you’re an adult, pumpkin?”

“Last time I checked, sweetheart.”

She threw a look at Sam that said _how do you put up with this_ , but he just shook his head and shrugged.

“Well, these legends tend to attract a certain type of demographic,” Sam mused. “So ... maybe I could go out and interview people as a writer for some urban legends website or something.”

“That’s a good idea. And me and Dean can do the straight-laced FBI thing and I’ll feed what we gather back to Ives while he continues to research.”

“Woa woa woa, wait a second,” Dean growled, sitting up in his chair. “I didn’t agree to this. Sammy and I are not splittin' up.” Dean didn’t have a problem splitting up with Sam normally, but he did not want to be left alone with this chick.

“Come on, Dean,” Sam countered. It was hard for him to hide his smug smile. “The park is huge and there are tons of people there. We’ll cover more ground if we split up.”

“I promise I’m fun to work with,” Liv chirped.

Dean seemed to pout.

Liv turned back to Sam. “Okay, so what are you gonna wear?

Sam blinked, uncomfortably. “Uh, I was just gonna go out like this.”

“Scruffy lumberjack doesn’t really scream horror-geek blog-runner.”

Sam’s hand jumped up to feel the stubble across his chin, absent-mindedly. He started to regret suggesting this idea in the first place.

“What kind of clothes do you have with you?”

He looked slightly awkward but grabbed his bag anyways and started digging through it. He laid out two v-necks, three pairs of jeans, a pair of socks, and five different plaid shirts of all colors. Liv looked it over, then grabbed a gray v-neck, a pair of jeans, and tore the blazer from his suit off the hanger that was hung on the hotel closet door, then arranged it all out on the bed.

“You should wear this.”

“Really?” Sam was incredulous.

“Yeah,” she said with confidence. “This’ll work for what some hipster paranormal-blog runner would wear.”

“Even this?” He held up the gray v-neck. “I _sleep_ in this.”

Liv grinned. “Yeah especially that.”

Sam looked at Dean who made a _don’t-ask-me_ gesture with his hands, amusement written all over his face. Sam reluctantly entered the bathroom with the clothing Liv had picked out, then emerged a minute later wearing it all and stepped in front of the mirror. “I just kind of look like a giant, douchey college freshman.”

“That’s the idea!” Liv looked him over and decided to roll up the sleeves of his jacket a little bit. She wouldn’t be able to have done so with a regular suit, but this one was pretty cheap so the fabric folded up easily.

“Is this necessary?”

“Well, not with _that_ attitude. You have to at least pretend to believe you belong in this look. Did you ever do theater in school?”

Dean’s sniggering could be heard from the back of the room.

Sam blinked into the mirror, furrowing his brow. “I was in a production of _Our Town_ once.”

“Hey!” She hit him on the shoulder, leaning back to look into his face with a smile. “Me too! I think all theater geeks probably were.” She laughed in a fog of momentary nostalgia as she finished with his sleeves, then said, “Okay well, just dig into your theater background and own it. Here, turn and hunch down.”

He obeyed hesitantly, then immediately regretted it. Her hands went up to his hair and pulled it back into a loose ponytail. He tried to thwart her by standing back up straight in the middle of her looping the rubber band around, but she just hopped up and sat on the counter in front of the mirror to finish.

“But my hair won’t even stay up,” he fussed as strands started falling back around his face.

Liv stepped back and took a long look at her work. _Damn_ , she thought. She’d like to say this was all about the job, but really she was having a bit more fun than was necessary.

“One more thing,” Liv said, crossing the hotel room to her purse. Sam peered around the corner, scared to see what she might bring back. She pulled a pair of square lensed glasses out then came to hand them to Sam. “Try these.”

“Oh, I don’t need the glasses--”

“They aren’t prescription. Just see what it looks like.”

“Why do you have non-prescription glasses in your purse?” Dean asked like it was the strangest thing he’d ever seen brought out of a lady’s handbag.

“Dude, there’s an arsenal in your trunk and you think _this_ is weird?”

“Yeah but all that stuff is useful.”

“Well, changing up your appearance can be useful, too. It’s good to have a few things laying around like this.”

Sam pursed his lips, looking in the mirror, then placed the glasses on his face. He cocked his head to the side, appraising himself, then said, “They _do_ kind of pull the whole facade together.”

“Told you.”

“You really enjoy the theatrics of this part of the job, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” she sighed. “Especially when I get to dress up someone else.”

 

\--------

 

“And this happened to a friend of a friend of your aunt’s neighbor?” Sam stood, slightly befuddled, towering over four college-age girls who were having a picnic in the park. They had introduced themselves in rapid fire as being called Marissa, Kira, Arianna, and Haley, and had been a lot more eager to talk to him about ghost stories than he thought they’d be when he first approached them. He decided they must just be urban legend enthusiasts.  He jotted their story down into a spiral, even though their account of the legend of Stow Lake didn’t seem that reliable. None of the lore he had researched so far included this thing called ‘Slenderman.’

“Yep!” insisted the one named Kira, staring up at him through her sunglasses. “Really scary stuff.”

Sam nodded fervently, as if he agreed. “Totally.” _Or not_ , he thought.

Sam  adjusted the prop glasses Liv had given him. They weren’t prescription, but they still felt odd on his face. Even so, he enjoyed playing this character. It was a nice change from the agent he was so used to. Sam had never had trouble adapting no matter what the job required (except maybe that one time he had to pose as a prison inmate), but Sam felt especially relaxed in this disguise, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why. Maybe it reminded him of Stanford, he was just up the road from it after all, and he always felt a little nostalgic when they got this close.

“Well, that’s not like what I heard,” interjected the girl Sam was pretty sure was called Haley. “My ex-boyfriend came out here with his brother one night and swears to _God_ that they saw that statue change positions. Like a weeping angel!”

“A weeping angel?” Sam asked.

“Like from Doctor Who?” asked Marissa.

Haley nodded.

“Oh, that’s fucked up.” All the girls shuttered at the thought.

“Right,” Sam furrowed his brow but wrote the information down, anyway. That lined up with some other stories he’d read, at least. “Well, thanks for your time, ladies,” he said, pen still moving across the page.

“What website did you say this is going on?”

Sam peeped up over the spiral to see the girls all smiling at him, expectantly. “Oh-- it’s a newly developing site. Hasn’t gone live yet.”

“Will you let us know if you use our stories?”

“Sure,” he said, quick on his feet, turning the page of his notebook and handing it to Arianna.  “Write your emails, here. I’ll shoot you a message if we use your stuff.”

They each scribbled their information enthusiastically, passing the notebook around. Then Haley rose to hand it back to Sam, but she wouldn’t let it go when he grabbed it, which caught him off guard.

“And there’s my number, there,” she said pointing with his pen. “Just in case.”

“Uh, thanks.” He took his pen back and nodded awkwardly at the girls, then turned to walk away. He was pretty sure he heard them giggling as he went. An unintentional grin split his face.

 

\---------

 

“I mean, we’re basically P.I.s of the paranormal,” said Liv, cheerfully, bopping along side Dean who was re-suited up in his regular, navy FBI suit as they moved in between visitors to question. She was wearing her own version of agent attire: a black pencil skirt, a vest over a white button-up, with a blazer, and her red hair pulled back in a bun.

“No, we’re _hunters_ ,” Dean insisted, rolling his eyes as though he was saying it for the tenth time. And Dean was pretty sure it was at _least_ that many times. _Does she ever shut up?_

“Yeah but we investigate-”

“We’re hunters.”

“And solve cases-”

“And hunt monsters!”

“ _And_ follow and interview people and-”

“And dig up bodies on a regular basis!”

“ _And_ go on stakeouts-”

Dean stopped and turned to her, throwing his hands in the air, exasperatedly. “What is so great about being a Private Eye?” he shouted.

“Have you _seen_ Veronica Mars?” she countered. And though she crossed her arms defiantly, she wore a smirk on her face.

 _This girl is outta her mind!_ he thought. And his expression showed it. He brought his pointer finger up toward her face. “We’re hunters. Now, c’mon.”

Liv watched in amusement as Dean stormed ahead of her. _This was fun._

“I bet you’d like the title better if you had seen that show,” she called, as she jogged to catch up to him.

Since there were two of them, Liv and Dean covered the larger part of the park while Sam worked his way across the other alone. It was a Saturday, so the park was buzzing with all kinds of visitors, from regulars there for their daily run to tourist who had ended up there just because of the ghost stories they had heard. After scoping out Stow Lake, itself, and the statue standing near the shore, the FBI agents stoically approached as many people as they could to get a feel for how the legend was starting to grow. Since there had been so many mysterious accidents lately, against good common sense, the place had actually become even more popular. Like a huge game of telephone, the stories they had encountered seemed to have been warped and inflated compared to the research Ives was feeding them.

Ives, now there was a character, or so Dean had said. It was clear he was brilliant, but once Dean and Sam actually met the guy, it was also pretty clear why it was easy to believe he could up and leave at any moment with no explanation and it be considered “classic Ives.” Meeting him didn’t put them at ease about working with him, but it had at least assure them (or Sam, rather, who had had his reservations about him since finding out he left Liv at the ER alone) that Ives was at least a _nice_ guy. Ives had apologized to Liv profusely when he arrived at the hotel half an hour after their phone conversation, and he wouldn’t stop until she popped him on the shoulder with an “Alright, alright,” and told him he could make it up to her by doing the hard interviews: the recent Lake victims’ families. He agreed to it without question, and even sent audio of the interview to Liv’s phone as soon as he could. Liv guessed it was to assure them that he hadn’t run off in the middle of this job.

So while Sam was doing his thing in his glasses and pony-tail across the park, and Ives was doing his thing with interviews and research, Dean and Liv were doing theirs by tag-teaming visitors. And it kind of felt like a well-oiled machine, something Dean would never admit, because networking _was not his thing_. Dean would also never admit that he was actually impressed with how good Liv seemed to be at extracting information from people. She could slip in and out of character-- her words, not his; he refused to use her _goofy theater terms_ for what they were doing-- with ease and she would adjust her agent’s personality slightly, depending on the kind of person they were talking to.

It took a little time for Dean to adjust, especially because of how much she enjoyed talking in between interviews. One second she’d be trying to get to know Dean a little better by asking what his favorite episode of Buffy was, but the next second, as they approached their next mark, she’d turn right back into the agent like she hadn’t just been breaking down why Tara was the best character on the show ten seconds earlier. It gave Dean whiplash at first, but he was eventually able to go with it, so by the middle of the afternoon they had built up a pretty good file of information.

“A lot of these accounts crossover,” Liv confirmed, flipping through their notes, as they took a break under the shade of a tree.

“With just each other?” Dean inquired, pearing over Liv’s shoulder.

“No, actually with Ives’ stuff, too.”

Liv’s phone began to ring so she pulled it out to see who was calling her.

“What is that, like… the fifth call since we came out here?” Dean scoffed.

Liv nodded distantly, then answered. “Vic? Yeah, what’s up? No, hon, I can’t, I’m working. In San Fran. With some hunters I’ve never met before, actually-- Eh, they’re _okay_ …” She winked at Dean. He raised his eyebrow at her. “Anyway, yeah I’m sorry. Is there anyone else around? Good luck, stay safe. Text me when you’re out of all that, okay? Yeah, okay. See ya.” As the call ended, Liv shook her head in worry.

“Another call about _another_ hunt?” Dean asked in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Liv replied.

“See, this right here is why I do not network. “

“This is weird though--”

“I go where I wanna go, following my _own_ instincts--”

“It’s not usually like this.”

“What?”

“I may get two calls a week, maybe three if my friends are really busy, but in the last few days I’ve gotten more and more. And now, this many in one day?”

Dean pursed his lips.

“I’ve never gotten this many calls so close together before. It’s like the world is going a little nuts.”

 

\-------

About an hour and a half later Sam had exhausted his entire section of the park a few times, so he started making his way across to see if he could find Dean. He took his phone out to text him

 

**Today 4:42 PM**

_Sam:_ Hey I’m done. Where are you guys?

 

**Today 4:43 PM**

_Dean:_ thank god! we’ve been talking to this old guy on a bench for 40 min! this grl wont shut up!

 

Sam laughed aloud reading Dean’s message. He had had a really good day interacting with people on vacation, getting some time to just himself in between interviews, stretching his legs, and enjoying the nice weather and the sunshine, but he would have given anything to watch Dean work with Liv all day. He imagined it was probably pretty entertaining.

 

**Today 4:49 PM**

_Sam:_ Sounds fun. I’m on your side of the park. I’ll look for a bench.

 

**Today 4:50 PM**

_Dean:_ dude hurry. i got2 get out of here. we’re under a big tree.

 

Sam didn’t rush to his brother’s aid. He figured the longer it took him to get there, the more hilarious the situation probably was. Plus, as the sun started descending, the lighting in the park just got prettier and prettier and he enjoyed taking his time to notice it. Finally, he spotted a nice sized tree hanging over a bench. Dean stood off to the side, arms crossed except for when he continued to pull out his phone to check to see if Sam had messaged him back. Liv sat next to a larger old man on the bench, staring at him intently as he seemed to be telling an enthralling story. Sam could not begin to hide his amusement.

At the sound of Sam’s shoes on the grass, Dean jerked his head around. _“Dude!”_ he whispered in a harsh tone. “Where have you been?”

Sam shrugged with an innocent smile. “I told you I was on my way from across the park.”

Dean rolled his eyes then turned back toward Liv and the old man. “Can you believe this?”

Sam began to listen to what the man was saying.

“.... and so here I sit, every year about this time.”

“Every year?” Liv repeated, a little breathless.

“Yes ma’am,“ he replied in a sweet tone.

“Well, that’s just wonderful, Wallace.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you can call me Wally.”

They both laughed.

Dean groaned. Sam hit him on the shoulder.

“Well,” said Wallace as he struggled to his feet. “You’ve been such great company for me, Miss Olivia, but I better head on home.”

“It was great meeting you, Wally.”

Liv shook the old man’s hand before Wallace was off, slowly trudging towards the parking lot of the park. He saluted Dean as he passed the Winchesters, so Dean threw his hand up in reply with a nod. The boys watched Wallace go as Liv appeared next to them.

“What a sweet man,” she cooed.

“Yeah,” Dean conceded. “I guess he wasn’t so --Are you _crying?”_

 _“No!_ I’m not- what? Not crying.”

Dean pointed at Liv’s face. “Yes you are, I can see it.”

“Ok, yeah, fine!” Liv brought her fingers up to her eyes to delicately ensure her make up wasn’t smeared. “But that was really sweet! He met his wife right here fifty-three years ago and he sits on this bench every year on this day, even though she passed away! I mean... _c’mon.”_

Sam’s smile broadened. “That is really sweet,” he agreed.

“Solidarity. Thanks, Sam.”

“With the stuff we deal with in this job, _that’s_ what gets you weepy?”

“You think I don’t sometimes cry about the job, too?”

Dean seemed slightly surprised by this comment, and didn’t respond.

“So, how was your side of the park?” Liv asked Sam.

“Not bad,” Sam replied. “Got a few interesting pieces of info.”

“You make the hipster blogger work for you?” She suggested playfully.

 _“Obviously,”_ he joked, making a show of thumbing through his spiral full of notes.

“Oh good! Let’s trade.”

“Yeah!”

They handed each other their notes and headed back to the bench to sit and read over the others’ stuff. Dean could be heard groaning, once again, in the background.

“Hah! You got a few really strange stories, it looks like,” Liv said, turning over a page with a story about an alligator getting loose in the lake.

“Oh, yeah that one was… odd, to say the least. But these seem pretty consistent with--”

“Woa, woa, _woa!”_ Liv exclaimed, reading over a page of Sam’s notes.

“What?” Dean demanded.

“You weren’t kidding about the hipster blogger working!” she laughed. Liv flipped the page out for the boys to see four girls’ email addresses and two phone numbers.

“ _Nice_ , Sammy!” Dean seemed impressed. 

“It wasn’t like that,” Sam claimed, defensively, though the smile didn’t leave his face. “I said I was writing for a website. Or _course_ I ended up with some contact info.” He tried to reach for the spiral but Liv jerked it out of his reach and held it out far on the other side of her body.

“Yeah, contact info from _‘beachygurl34’_ and _‘starlightstarXO’_ and--” Liv struggled to keep the notebook out of Sam’s reach, but through her laughter and the fact that Sam’s arms are miles long, she failed. He snatched it from her and closed it swiftly, red streaked across his cheeks just above a grin. “Give me those glasses back, sir,” Liv demanded, catching her breath from the laughter. “You’re too powerful in them.”

Sam had almost forgotten he was wearing them. Sometime during the day he had settled into them and gotten comfortable. He took them off and folded them, then he freed his hair from the hair tie, running his hands through it so it would fall like it was supposed to. He handed both the glasses and the rubber band to Liv who he was surprised to see was staring at him. He raised his eyebrows at her. 

 _Oh no_ , she thought.

“Um, can we please get the hell outta here?”

Both Liv’s and Sam’s attention jolted toward Dean.

“Sure,” Sam answered. He got up from the bench, slipping off the jacket with the rolled up sleeves, the last layer of the disguise he had worn that day. He had been unsure of the idea this morning, but now he was sad to see the look go. He threw the jacket over his shoulder as he followed Dean towards the parking lot. 

Liv watched him go for a second, a slight gnawing in her core. _Ohhhhh no_ , she thought again. 

“You coming?” She heard Sam ask, and she realized he had turned back when she hadn’t followed.

“Er, yeah sorry! Um...” she faltered, flustered, then pointed to her phone awkwardly. “I was just answering a call,” she lied.

“What is that, like, six calls about hunts, now?!” Dean shouted from up ahead. 

" _Six_  other hunts?" Sam asked in disbelief, as Liv arrived at his side. "That's... troublesome."

“Yup," she agreed. "I'm in trouble."

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group works together to gather all the information they can about the Lady of Stow Lake legend, but the more they learn, the more frustrating things become.

“She called _you_ , though?” Ives whimpered, head slumped a little bit to the side as he sat with his laptop at a table in the Winchesters’ hotel room. Dean had insisted they all bring the ‘party’ back to their place after discussing research with Ives via speaker phone got too complicated and there were no beers in Liv’s room.

“Yes, Ives. She called _me_ ,” Liv mimicked, color-coding her interview notes with a highlighter. “Why is that so surprising?”

Ives shrugged pitifully. “I don’t know, it’s just --I thought Jamie didn’t like you…”

“Well, she clearly likes me better than you, after Baltimore,” Liv shot back, unruffled. Dean and Sam exchanged amused looks. “Besides,” she continued in a kinder tone, “you guys broke up like a year ago. You gotta get over her.”

“I am --I’m _over_ her,” he insisted, sitting up straighter.

“Alright, then.” Liv nodded, eyes never leaving her notes.

“Hey Liv,” Sam said, pausing his work. “You using green to highlight mentions of the statue moving?”

“Yeah,” she replied, trying to cover the smile that appeared at hearing him say her name. “And yellow for mentions of something actually coming up out of the lake.”

“Okay good, me too. Do you have a third color? A few of mine crossover with a mention of hearing a baby cry. Did any of the people you talked to say that?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “That’s super creepy, here.” She tossed him an orange highlighter.

“Thanks.” He caught it with a smile before diving back into his notes.

 _No, no, no,_ she thought as the gnawing started again. But no matter how focused she seemed to stay on her notes, the memory of how good Sam smelled when he leaned across her to grab his notebook back in the park wouldn’t leave her head. _It’s just research!_ she thought. _Pull yourself together._ She missed the simpler times earlier that day when Sam could address her and she wouldn’t have to fight to corral the butterflies in her stomach.

“What’s the pink for?” Dean asked her, nursing a beer in his left hand.

“Oh, just for my favorite ridiculous stories,” she answered.

“What good will that do you?”

“About as much good as your beer is doing you right now.”

Sam laughed to himself. He really enjoyed watching someone other than himself give Dean a hard time. Dean didn't seem to appreciate it as much.

Suddenly, Ives’ phone started to beep. He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth as he answered the text. “Damn,” he said. “Another case. This one’s in Ohio.”

“So that’s what?” Sam asked. “Nine calls just today between the two of you?”

Liv and Ives exchanged troubled expressions then nodded.

“All from different people in different places each time?” said Dean. “No overlap?”

“I don’t think any overlapped,” Liv confirmed.

“I can’t believe you got more calls than I did--”

“Ives, you’ve got to get over her!”

The group settled into a working quiet for a few minutes before Dean interrupted it again.

“I’m gonna pick up that pizza we ordered up the street, I’m starving. Sammy, you comin’?”

“Actually,” began Sam, “I’m in a real rhythm here with my notes. I don’t want to break it.”

Dean made a face that might read like a young boy who got lost at the mall.

“I’ll go,” Ives offered, closing his laptop. “The computer screen is starting to burn my eyes anyway…”

 _“Awesome,”_ Dean grumbled, then they were out the door. As it clicked shut, Liv became hyper aware of the fact that she was alone, in a hotel room, with Sam. Mere hours before that wouldn’t have been a big deal at all for her, but for some reason, post-Golden-Gate-park, she found herself mentally panicking about what to say. People had always told her that conversation came easily to her, even in groups, but since the room cleared out and she was left alone with the wielder of those cheekbones and biceps to her left, she’d argue it _only_ came easily to her in groups.

Unfortunately, it felt just as awkward for her to continue to stare silently at her notes as it did to try to start a conversation. Then there was the fear that she’d come on too strong if she did speak up. Liv wasn’t great at chill. She didn’t have a lot of it.

Her eyes jumped away from notes to find Sam distractedly combing his yellow highlighter lid through the front few tendrils of hair that weren’t tucked behind his ear as he scanned over his notes. The butterflies escaped again.

_Seriously?_

She audibly sighed. That brought Sam’s attention to her.

_Shit!_

She grabbed her phone quickly to cover her embarrassing lack of smooth. Being caught dreamily sighing by the guy she was dreamily sighing about could quite possibly be the least cool thing she would ever do, so she had to play it off somehow.

“ _Another_ text?” he asked. Liv was just thankful he didn’t realize she had been staring at him like a creep .

“Um, you know....” She clicked through her inbox where no new messages were. “I thought I felt my phone jolt, but it was something else, I guess.”

“That’s a relief. Sorry to pry, but all these case calls are getting bizarre.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, a bit breathily. “It’s like there’s a full moon but it controls all monsters, not just werewolves. And not just at night.”

“Actually, if you keep a werewolf awake through the night during the right time of the lunar cycle, they’ll change during the day, too.”

Liv blinked at Sam.

“It sometimes depends on their sleep pattern…”

Her expression betrayed that she was impressed. All she knew of werewolves was what she had read about them. At least her dumb sigh had served to break the ice again.

“How do you know _that_?”

Sam only cocked his brow and sunk back into his notes.

“Again with the mystery, huh?”

“Comes with the job, I guess.”

“We all handle it a little differently.” She couldn’t decide if he was intentionally trying to hook her in or if this equal parts intriguing and challenging thing he had going on was purely accidental. .

Sam nodded, not looking up from his notes. “Some of us are more guarded than others,” he agreed, absentmindedly.

“Well, what if,” --Liv sat her notes aside-- “someone wanted to get to know you, ya know? Like... _hypothetically_?”

_Classic Liv. Absolutely no chill._

Sam stopped writing, his eyes flashing toward her in surprise. “I don’t know,” he replied, raising his eyebrows. “They may not like what they find.”

“Are you doing that ‘ _you shouldn’t get to know me, I’m bad for you, I’m dangerous_ ’ Edward Cullen thing--?”

_“What?”_

“--because it’s adorable, let me tell you, nice try…”

“No!” Sam laughed, leaning forward in his seat. “No, it’s not like that. It’s not a line.”

“Okay,” she conceded, waving her hands as if to erase her last comment. “Then maybe you could let this someone make her own decisions about what she may or may not like … about you.” She shrugged. “Theoretically speaking.”

Sam’s eyes flickered from his notes to Liv, who was smiling at him from behind her spiral, as he considered what she said. His expression was unreadable to Liv but at least, she noted, he was still grinning.

“Matched any patterns while we were out?” came Dean’s voice as the hotel door busted open. Ives entered behind him carrying three pizzas in one hand and a mostly eaten slice in the other.

“Not yet,” Sam replied.

Liv deadpanned. “Yeah, we were talking about _Twilight_ ,” she said.

Dean’s expression was worth the rant that followed.

The four of them converged on the pizza and by the time there were only two pieces left, they had made a pretty comprehensive summary of what they knew so far. When it came down to it, they needed more than just interviews. Ives pointed out that it would add a lot to the investigations and help things go faster if they could get detailed reports from the coroner’s office about each victim.

“We’ll have to wait a few more hours before it’ll be safe to break in,” Dean said.

“We may not have to wait,” Liv replied. “I think I can get what we need.”

“See if you can get some medical files on the victims that were just injured, too,” Ives suggested.

“Two stops in one night?” Liv smirked. “Haven’t done that in a while.”

“Me and Sam have been to both as FBI already,” Dean protested. “They weren’t exactly cooperative so there’s no way they’re gonna let another round of Feds just walk in. We’re gonna have to break in.”

Liv held her hand up to stop him. “I’m not going as a Fed, so relax. I know a guy down at the coroner’s so it shouldn’t be an issue. The medical records will be tricky, but I bet I can probably manage that, too. We’ll just see.”

Dean crossed his arms. Liv thought it made him look kind of like a skeptical cartoon villain.  

“I just need someone to be my getaway driver --not you, Ives. You lost your partner status when you abandoned me at an ER with a head injury.”

He sulked.

“I’ll go,” Sam said, standing and stretching a little.

Dean’s expression became even more cartoon-like at the thought of being stuck with Ives again. _“Oh_ no!” he protested. “You two aren’t going out alone. I’m coming with you. And there will be no _‘Twilight talk!’”_

“Whatever, Dean,” Liv chuckled. “I’m going to change. Meet me at my room in ten minutes.”

“Meet us at the Impala in ten minutes,” Dean corrected.

“I didn’t realize you brother was such a control freak, Sam,” Liv jabbed as she slipped past Dean at the door. Sam was giving him an incredulous side-eye.

“Well if you guys are bolting, I’m taking my shit and heading back to my hotel,” Ives mewled. He started gathering up his laptop and power cords, then reached for Liv’s notes. “Dude, do you mind if I take your spiral, too?”

Sam's forehead rumbled in surprise, but he grabbed his notes, tore out the ones he’d added that day, and extended them to Ives without question. “Just… bring them back tomorrow.”

“You got it, man.” He continued to pack things away. “I want to try out this software I’ve been coding by feeding in your highlighted notes to cross reference --”

“That’s fascinating, Zuck,” Dean boomed in a monotone, holding the door open expectantly.

Ives threw his laptop case strap over his shoulder in a huff. “I look nothing like Mark Zuckerberg,” he mumbled as he passed the Winchesters.

\-----

The boys leaned against the Impala. It had only been about seven minutes. Dean was keeping count.  

“C’mon, Sam,” Dean grumbled. “We’ve barely known this girl for two days and she’s already shown us, like, three different versions of herself! How much can you really know about a chick like that?”

“She seems pretty authentic to me,” Sam replied.

Dean’s response was a sound like _‘Pfft.’_

“What do you have against her? I don’t get it.”

“She doesn’t make any sense, Sam! She’s a hunter but she still exudes this bubbly, sunshine-y bullshit! I don’t trust it, man.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Not everyone has to be Josey freakin’ Wells to get this job done. Give her some credit, Dean!”

Sam glared at his brother but Dean didn’t notice as his eyes went wide, staring right past Sam. Sam followed Dean’s gaze to see Liv walking towards the car from the hotel entrance dressed very differently from what she wore to research. Her hair was stacked tall on her head with a clip holding it in place. She had thrown a bit more make up on, her shirt was unbuttoned to excess, and she’d paired a mini skirt with some sky-high heels.

“You guys ready?” she asked cheerfully as she arrived at the car. The Winchesters stared a second longer than they probably should have before either responded.

“What is … all this?” Dean demanded.

“I told you,” she replied a bit impatiently. “I know a guy at the coroner’s.”

“Yeah!” Dean scoffed. “But does he know _you?_ ”

“He knows what he needs to know.” Liv smiled wide. She kind of liked how disapproving Dean apparently was of her methods.

“And this guy, you flirt with--?”

“Kind of like Agent Steven Perry?”

Dean made another sputtery noise that wasn’t exactly words.

“I cultivate relationships, Dean.”

“You lead him on--”

Liv crossed her arms defiantly. “I work in San Francisco a lot, so since I’m planning to return, I make sure I have access to places of use to get the jobs done instead of barging in and wearing out my welcome in the first few minutes, like you two did yesterday. Which is why _your_ plan to get these reports was to break into the very same building where I’m about to use the front door.”

Dean looked to his brother for help but Sam could only offer a shrug. “What’s in the bag?” Dean barked, pointing to an athletic bag that did not seem to go with the rest of her disguise.

“Two stops, two outfits.”

Dean rolled his eyes.

“Okay, it’s been ten minutes. That was your rule, so shall we?”

Dean puffed out a frustrated breath then stormed around to the driver’s side. Sam couldn’t help but smirk as he opened the passenger side door for Liv to climb into the back.

“If I had known there was going to be a quiz before entering the car,” she said to Sam, under her breath, as she shimmied in behind the front seat, “I would have studied.”

“I think you did just fine,” Sam replied in a similar tone. He closed the door behind them.

\----

Dean was quiet as he and Sam waited across the street in the Impala with the Medical Examiner’s office in view. Liv had insisted they not drive into the parking lot as she thought the car was ‘the most conspicuous vehicle on the planet.' She wasn’t wrong, in Sam’s opinion, but it was hard for Dean to hear anything negative about Baby. Thankfully, he hadn’t started in on Liv’s methods again. He couldn’t argue that they weren’t just as effective, if not more, than those he would have taken to acquire what they needed. The boys watched her cross the street back towards them tapping the gaudy pink rhine-stoned purse she carried in with her.

Sam hopped out to allow her back into the Impala. As soon as she slipped into the back seat, she started unbuckling her heels with a groan. “I hate wearing these shoes!”

“How’d it go?” Sam asked.

“Good! A few of the files weren’t even filed yet so I was able to make copies.”

“And the others?” Dean inquired suspiciously.

“I snagged pictures of them on my phone. It’s not perfect, but Stan was really hovery tonight.”

“But we got everything we need?” Sam sounded impressed.

“All that we can get from here. Next stop, the hospital. If Dean would be so kind?”

The Impala roared to life and they were on their way. After a few minute there came a weird shuffling from the back seat.

“What the hell are you doin’ back there?” Dean’s patience was clearly wearing thin.

“Trying to change without flashing anyone.”

“Do you have to do that right now?”

“I’d prefer to only wear my push up bra when I have to. I need an entirely different look for this next stop, anyway.”

“Hmmf, just through the sleeve and then off? Kind of like a magic trick.” Dean chuckled. “I may have been as interested in magic as a kid as Sammy if magicians pulled that out of a hat.”

“Dude,” Sam thumped Dean on the shoulder. “C’mon!”

“What? She’s the one changin’.”

“You didn’t know girls could do that?” Liv asked, unbothered. The shuffling continued as she used her sweatshirt to shield herself changing her blouse underneath.

“Nah, usually when a girl’s taking off her bra around me, she don’t mind if I see what’s underneath.”

“Wow, Sam, your brother is a class act. Eyes straight forward on the road, fellas.” Then Liv dipped down to the floorboard of the back seat. More shuffling.

“Whoa, what the hell are you doin’ now?” Dean demanded.

“Obstructed view because I knew you pervs wouldn’t keep your eyes on the road!”

“What, no I just …” Dean sputtered. His eyes flicked accidentally to the rear-view mirror before he could catch himself and he saw one of her legs up in the air as she was apparently changing into pants. “I’m not looking! You’re kicking the back of my seat!”

“You’ve got plenty of legroom back here, Deano.” Her voice was slightly muffled as she spoke from the floor. “I figured you knew that.” She popped right-side back up in the her seat with her hair ruffled and falling down around her face.

“I know how big the back seat is…”

“You’ve gotta stop bragging about your sexual escapades to basically strangers...”

Sam laughed.

“Shuddup both of you!”

She smoothed her hair back into a sleek bun, blotted away some of the excess make up, and placed the fake glasses she’d lent to Sam on her face. From her bag she pulled a long white labcoat and threw it on over her blouse and dress pants. Then clipped a fake ID to her collar, she sighed, she was ready to sneak herself into the right part of the hospital.

Sam felt Liv tap him on the shoulder. “Yeah?” he responded, leaning his elbow over the back of his seat.  

“So,” she began, “you’re into magic?”

Dean snickered triumphantly.

Sam felt his cheeks start to burn. “I don't like magic... _per se_.." he stuttered.

" _Per se_. Latin for 'by itself,' so do you like magic _with_ other things?"

Sam laughed and rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"What _do_ you mean?"

Sam gave her a wry smile then turned away to face the dashboard.

"C'mon Sam, tell me! What does magic have to be paired with for you to like it?"

She giggled as he glanced sideways.

She sighed dramatically. "And the mystery continues."

“Alright,” came Dean’s unamused voice. “That’s enough.”

\----

“After crunching all the data, my software showed there were a few things that appeared in every single interview conducted yesterday.” It was the next morning and Sam, Dean, Liv, and Ives were having breakfast at a cafe up the street from the park. Ives clicked around on his laptop as Liv watched over his shoulder, then he turned the screen around to show the Winchesters his findings.

“This is pretty cool stuff, Ives,” Sam declared.

“What am I lookin’ at?” Dean asked. He needed more coffee. Ives explained the colors and squiggling lines of the data on his screen.

“In the end all it really does is run the information from the data you guys collected at the Park against the research we did about the original legend and tell us what variations of the story are most likely to have… contributed to these.” Ives pointed to the stack of medical records Liv was able to gather from the coroner’s and the hospital the night before. Then he turned the laptop back toward himself.

“Okay,” Sam began. “So the original legend is, apparently sometime in the early 1900s a woman became pregnant and hid the pregnancy from her family. She drowned the child in the lake then threw herself in soon after.”

“Yuh,” Ives interjected. “Rumor is that if someone goes near the pioneer lady statue at Stow Lake at night, weird shit will happen.”

“ _‘Weird shit,’_ ” Dean snorted, taking a swig of his black coffee. “That’s a job descriptor if I ever heard one.”

“And the rumors or legends are what made Stow Lake such a popular place right now, because it's close to Halloween,” Liv clarified.

“For sure,"  Ives continued. "In some accounts the lady comes up from the lake, in others the statue near the lake actually comes to life. Or --and this is really Dr. Yoon creepy-- sometimes the legends say its face actually changes shape.”

“Dr. Yoon?” Liv asked.

“Yeah, from that Korean horror movie, _Face_. You never seen that?”

Everyone shook their heads.

Ives sighed disappointedly and went on. “Last of all, sometimes the statue has no legs or no head, and people report weird electrical problems with their cars and phones.”

“I was near the statue,” Liv added. “The night I got knocked out, I was right under it and I was looking at the thing, but it didn’t move.”

“According to the data, the most common story was seeing a lady out on the lake coming towards the shore, the second was hearing a baby cry.”

“Well, here’s a question,” Dean said. “This legend is a hundred years old and the ghost stories have been going on for about that long each Halloween, but no one has been killed here until now. Why all of a sudden are people dyin’?”

“None of this makes much sense,” Sam agreed.

“Let’s look at the reports, though,” Liv pointed out. “The medical records showed that in each accident, or whatever, all the victims were found or admitted with some black residue somewhere on their bodies. That’s something the papers didn’t print in the articles about the Lake.”

“So ectoplasm?” Dean suggested. “Goes along with vengeful spirit.”

“Yeah,” Liv conceded. “I just wish there was more to go off of. I was sure once we got all our research laid out like this, things would start making more sense.“ They were all a little crestfallen.

“What are we missing?” Liv mumbled to herself.

Just then, Ives’ cellphone pinged. “Hah!” he shot at Liv, tapping back a reply. “Noe contacted me for a job, not you!”

“Dude, it’s not a competition!” she exclaimed, though she seemed to be pouting ever so slightly. “Besides, aren’t you bothered by the amount of cases we--?” Liv’s phone pinged, too. “Hah! Suck it, Ives, Noe texted me, too!” Ives’ shoulders dropped a little.

Sam watched their interaction, amused. He sipped his coffee.

“Hey, Olivia.” Dean was leafing through Liv’s notes one more time.

“It’s Liv.”

“What was that old guy’s name we talked to last that wouldn’t shut up?”

“Aw, Wallace.” Liv beamed. “He was the best.”

“Now you two wasted what felt like a year of my life during that marathon conversation but didn’t he say he had a friend who lives in town who claims he used to know someone who was alive when the lady of Stow Lake had only just died?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a furrowed brow. “I think you’re right.”

“Since all this mumbo jumbo didn’t end up telling us anything,” --Dean indicated all the notes, reports, and laptop strewn across the table-- “maybe we should go talk to the guy who may have some stories straight from a person who knew the Lady.”

“The second-hand accounts from the memory of an elderly stranger?” Sam asked, simpering.

“You got a better idea, smart ass?”

Sam shook his head, reaching for the notes Dean had been skimming. “No,” he admitted. “Looks like our only option.”

“Alright!” Dean exclaimed. “Then let’s take this party on the road.”

 ****  


About an hour and a half later, after Liv had contacted Wallace and gotten the name of the man with the story, Sam and Dean sat in a nursing home lobby across from Liv and what they figured was the oldest man on the planet. His name was Jimmy Jay. If not for how he continued to wash his eyes over Liv’s bright red hair from the top of her head to where it fell across her shoulders again and again, Dean would have sworn this man was blind. Liv sat close to his wheelchair and nodded almost constantly to assure him she was listening to everything he said. Ives was not listening. He was able to sneak his earbuds in the third time Jimmy recounted the same Stow Lake legend they already knew.

“And he used to say,” Jimmy rasped in a deep voice that may have been good for jazz in its younger days, “you get too close to that lake and she’ll come right up and snatch you away.”

Liv nodded again but even she seemed to be getting exasperated.

“This is starting to look like a dead end, too,” Dean whispered to Sam.

Sam’s rumpled forehead and uncomfortable expression showed he agreed.

“How many more times can he tell us the exact same shit he already said?”

Sam shook his head. “If he can’t recall what he already told us ten minutes ago, it’s not likely he’ll be able to remember anything helpful from eighty years ago…”

“Right, sir, but what else did he say about the lady?” Liv inquired, redirecting Jimmy Jay away from legends. “Did he ever say anything about what she was like when she was alive?”

“She lived over one hundred years ago,” Jimmy started again and Liv hung on every word. “But she still haunts that lake by the cabin in the Park…” Liv heaved a sigh in vexation and shot the Winchesters a pleading look.

“Um,” Sam cleared his throat, sitting forward. “Right, but when she was alive, Mr. Jay. Do you remember any stories about that?”

“Yeah, we know all the legends,” Dean chimed in, reaching over to yank one of Ives’ earbuds out of his ear without breaking eye contact with Jimmy. Ives swore just loud enough to upset an elderly lady playing Solitaire on the couch across from him. “We’re looking for a more inside scoop.”

“He always spoke of the legends,” Jimmy said. “He always felt so bad for her.” They all leaned in a bit, hoping they might actually get something useful. “He hoped if he spread the legend, nobody’d forget her.”

“Uh _huh?_ ” Liv tried to lead him to continue.

“Because the legend was that she’d take you down into that lake with her if she caught you on the shore--” The retelling of the legend was drowned out by four groans that Jimmy didn’t seem to notice. “--didn’t want anyone to suffer that way….” He continued on and on and didn’t even stop when his audience started leaning in to talk quietly amongst themselves.

“Dean, I don’t think this is getting us anywhere,” Liv whimpered, defeated.

“You ain’t lyin’,” he agreed. “What do we do now?”

“--you could hear some baby cry and he said that was _her_ baby. She was always searching for it on the shore--”

Sam kept his eyes on Jimmy, nodding, but talked directly to the group. “We can go out to the lake later tonight?”

“But we still aren’t sure what we’re dealing with,” Ives protested. “When me and Liv went.. well, you saw how it ended up.”

“No offense,” Dean retorted, “but we’re” --he gestured between Sam and himself-- “much better at this than you.”

“--once visited her grave. He never told me why but he liked to go ever so often--”

All their attention snapped back to Jimmy Jay.

“Wait, sir,” Sam spoke up so Jimmy could hear. “ What did you say about her grave? Your friend would visit?”

“Yes, he would go out and lay some flowers on her grave from time to time. Never did tell me why--”

“Do you remember if he said where the grave is?” Dean asked, eagerly.

“Oh yes,” Jimmy Jay replied. “There was a cemetery out behind our houses at the time.”

They all stared waiting for him to be more specific but that moment never came.

“And where did your houses used to be, Jimmy?” Liv asked in the sweetest tone she could muster, though she was screaming internally.

“Right there across from the Park,” he mused. “One of the oldest cemeteries in the city….”

Dean popped right off of his seat. “Let’s roll!” He moved too quickly to the door to see Liv shoot him a disapproving look. Ives saw, but didn’t care, and headed towards the door, anyway.

“I never have visitors,” Jimmy continued. “How nice that four young people took an interest in me today.”

“Thanks for telling us stories,” Liv told the old man.

Sam shook his hand.

“You bring that red hair back here sometime,” Jimmy requested.

“Will do,” Liv replied, then she and Sam filed out of the nursing home, too.

 ****  


“I forgot how chilly it gets in San Francisco when the sun starts going down,” Liv muttered, watching Sam and Dean work to make a grave shaped hole with a shovel each. It hadn’t taken the group long to locate the cemetery Jimmy had been referring to, so after a quick meal, they were on their way. Though calling what they found a cemetery was generous. It was really just an unruly field with three trees scattered across it, and a dilapidated iron fence around it. Even though this graveyard wasn’t on the map, Dean had rightly figured that it probably wasn’t far from the lake itself. Then Sam had done quick search online for housing developments and how they had changed as the Park grew and developed through the last hundred years and _voila!_ There were only so many places it could be. It had been equally easy to figure out which of the nearly completely eroded gravestones belonged to the so-called Lady of Stow Lake. She had been buried under a small tree a few rows in and her name was Gilda.

Sam threw dirt over his shoulder with his shovel as he continued to try to free Gilda from her grave. It was slightly cold but the work had gotten him warm enough to take his brown jacket off and unbutton his red plaid shirt so that his white v-neck was visible. Liv found herself consistently catching herself staring as he worked and prayed to whatever god there might be that no one else caught her staring, too. Sam paused, bringing his hand up to his forehead to wipe a bit of sweat aside and tuck his hair behind his ears.

_Oh, God help me._

“You want to wear my jacket?” he asked her. “I won’t need it.”

“What?” she squeaked. Her cheeks started to glow.

“You said you were cold.” He gestured toward the Impala, behind her. “My jacket’s on the hood of the car if you want.”

 _“Oh!”_ She giggled in a slightly embarrassing way. “Right. I... I’ll be fine. We’re about to start a fire anyways, right?”

He shrugged and returned to digging. There was no way she could put his jacket on and keep her cool. She was barely able to do so as it was. Thankfully the burn of her cheeks worked just as well to warm her up.

“You guys actually have an arsenal back here…” Ives was peering into the trunk of the Impala in awe.

“Yup,” Dean grunted, unloading another shovelful of dirt. “We’re pretty much ready for anything.”

“Liv, there are industrial bags of salt!”

“I know, Ives,” she replied, coming to stand next to him at the car.

“They even have this giant container of cleaning solution.” Ives pointed at a giant spray bottle filled with blue liquid. “What the fuck, huh?”

“You got me…”

“Dude. You think they’d be interested in hearing my holy water bullet idea?”

Liv placed her hand solemnly on his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “No. I don’t. Sorry, man.”

Ives capitulated sadly, then handed a bag of salt to Liv. He grabbed the gasoline, closed the trunk, and they returned to the graveside just as Dean was helping Sam up out of the ditch. The boys had reached the coffin. Liv was always surprised how much smaller these old coffins were. She felt a chill run up her back.

“Doesn’t it look like it’s been opened before?” Sam asked, studying it from ground level.

The rest of the company squinted at it. “How did it feel while digging?” asked Liv.

“Easier than it probably should have,” Dean replied.

Sam used his shovel to pry the lid open and it came off easily to reveal something black and charred inside.

“What the--!” Dean dropped to his knees to fish out the casket lid altogether. He tossed it aside. Inside was salt and ashes only. No Lady was left.  

The four exchanged baffled looks.

“Someone has already salted and burned Gilda!” Ives shouted.

“And by the look of it, it was years ago,” Sam observed, inspecting the ashes mixed with leaves, branches, and cemetery dirt.

“This case just keeps getting more and more confusing!” Liv exclaimed.

“Don’t you mean more and more bullshit?” Dean grumbled, sitting on the edge of the open grave in defeat.

“That’ll work.” She slumped down next to him, staring into the hole. She used the industrial bag of salt as an armrest.

“We thought we were so close,” Ives whimpered.

Sam’s expression betrayed that the wheels were still turning as he pulled himself back out of the grave. He stared into it, then paced a little bit behind the other three. “It’s plausible that someone has something that belongs to her and is using it to control her.”

Dean threw rocks in the hole he had dug for no reason, but nodded.

“Could be, man,” Ives grumbled. “But could be a million other things, too! We’re like, basically no where closer to figuring this shit out than we were two days ago. Could be a ghost, could be a person using a ghost, could be a serial killer using the legend of the ghost as a cover, could be fucking aliens, man! Could be anything… we still don’t know!” He kicked the grass under his shoe.

Liv shivered in the breeze and patted the ground next to her. “C’mon, Ives. Sit. Calm down. Stop showing our new friends your most embarrassing side.” Ives obeyed petulantly.

“ _That’s_ his most embarrassing side?” Dean muttered. Liv popped him on the shoulder. She shivered again and just when she started to wish she had taken Sam up on his jacket offer, she felt something quite large and insulated being wrapped around her from behind. She thought her heart might have actually jumped up into her throat as Sam’s hands smoothed his jacket securely around her shoulders.

“There’ll be no fire tonight,” he said, then took a seat on the other side of Ives. Liv clutched the jacket to her,shivering for an altogether different reason. The four let their feet dangle into the hole for a few silent minutes before Sam spoke up again. “The only thing we can do at this point is just go to the Lake and hope she pops up,” he suggested.

“Well,” Dean said, standing. “It’s about to be nightfall and the Lake is right there.” He threw his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s finish this.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunters make an unexpected discovery at the lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Pairing Suggestion: [When the Lights Go Down in the City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9tyMp5A03k) \- Journey, [Closer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e9NSMY8QiQ) \- Tegan and Sara  
> Thanks to [Jess](http://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus) for being my beta for this chapter!

Dean dug through the trunk of the Impala looking for bullets, his overshirt tied around his waist. Digging the grave had got him overheated, even though the air was crisp as darkness set over Golden Gate Park. Stow Lake lay just a few yards away from the lot where they had parked, the little homey cabin that could be visited during normal park hours just on the other side. The statue of the lady was casting a twisted shadow across the shore.

“Take this,” Dean said, handing Ives a crowbar over his shoulder. “It’s made of iron so…” He kept digging.

Ives took the weapon reluctantly. This was his least favorite part of hunting, the actual hunting.

Finally Dean pulled himself out of the trunk, loading the last round of rock salt into his shotgun. “Sammy, you good?”

“I’m set,” Sam replied, tapping his hip where his overshirt concealed a weapon at his belt.

“And you?” Dean turned to Liv. She nodded at him. Dean appraised her for a second, then reached back into the trunk and came out with another crowbar. “Here.”

“I’m good with my hunting knife, really--”

“Just take it,” he barked back, more aggressively than he meant to. It had been his idea to go to the source of the legend and take whatever came out of the lake head on, but he still wasn’t completely comfortable doing so not knowing exactly what they would be going up against.

Liv took the crowbar from him. It wasn’t really her style. She could use it if she had to dispel a ghost but for the most part, it wasn’t an ideal weapon for her frame. She took a few steps away from the car to swing it around. It was a little too heavy for her to be very comfortable using it.

“Two of us need to be down by the statue like Olivia was the other night,” Dean explained, “and then two of us will be just up the ways across the lake to get a good view of what happens with the statue.”

“So basically two of us will be bait?” Ives pointed out. “Not it!” Liv stifled a laugh at how dramatically Dean rolled his eyes. “Plus, I’ve been working on these really cool binoculars so this gives me a chance to see how they work in the field.”

“I’ll do it,” Sam offered. Dean looked uncomfortable, his jaw tightening as he grit his teeth, but he nodded anyway.

“Then Poindexter and me’ll head up that way,” Dean grumbled, pointing his gun towards the trees at the side of the lake. His eyes jumped from Sam to Liv and back like he was trying to decipher something, then turned and lead Ives away. Of the two he could leave for back-up for his brother, he trusted Liv a lot more than Ives.

Sam and Liv started towards the lake. There was a dim lamp set up that cast yellow light across the statue. It kind of made her look sick and eerie under the moonlight. Liv studied the statue’s face the way she had a few nights before. It didn’t move, not like the interviewees had said. Liv tapped her knuckle against the it. The Lady of Stow Lake was truly made of only stone.  Liv turned out to look across the lake. She couldn’t see Dean or Ives in the trees. They had done a good job concealing themselves and she hoped it was good enough so whatever this legend was would show itself.

Fog started to cling to the top of the water as the chill in the air bit harder. If they had been excitable teens out in the park for a fun scare, the moonlight reflecting in it may be just enough to make them believe they had seen a ghost floating out on the water, but there wasn’t one. Everything was still and calm, nothing seemed to be amiss except for four people at the shore of the lake, ready to spring into attack mode at any moment.

Suddenly, everything was illuminated with what could only be a series of spotlights. Sam and Liv turned towards the source, the cabin next to the lake. They could make absolutely nothing out as their eyes tried to adjust, blinded and disoriented by the suddenness of the glare. There was a sound of white noise, then a voice humming through a walkie-talkie. _“We need confirmation. Are the targets in view?”_

A booming voice answered into the radio. “Affirmative. One, at least. Shut the other locations down.”

And before they could react, Liv and Sam found themselves being approached by five menacing men in suits. Liv was completely confused but the puzzle pieces seemed to be falling into place for Sam. He stepped forward revealing a machete in hand, ready to attack.

Liv’s eyes went wide. “What the _hell_ \--!?”

Two men charged Sam, but he was quick enough to avoid a blow from the first and land a blow on the second. The machete lodged itself in the second man’s shoulder, but he stood unphased, like he didn’t even notice. When Sam tore the machete out, black blood was dripping from his weapon.

“Leviathans!” Sam shouted. The word had no meaning to Liv.

A third man, or leviathan, went for Liv so she clocked him in the face with the crowbar. It seem to even register on the creature’s face. She hit him again and again as she backed away, but nothing. She threw the crowbar aside with a frustrated groan. As the leviathan struck at her face, she dropped swiftly to her knees to avoid the blow and grab her exceptionally less impressive weapon, a standard hunting knife, from her boot. With this she was much more at home. She jabbed at him, catching him across the face, and landed a deep slash across his ribs, but even with the familiarity of the weapon and the confidence it gave her, the damage was still like nothing to this thing.

He lifted her up off the ground by the neck but she was able to slash him across the throat, black ooze pouring from the wound, his face glitching between that of a man and that of a monster with no eyes and no face, only angry, gritting teeth glazed with dried blood. She shrieked, rolling away from it has the creature fell to his knees, releasing her in the process. Just before the thing lunged at her again, there was a swift breeze of motion, the sound of a frustrated growl, and the flash of an arm sailing through the air as Sam’s machete caught the thing in mid-spring. It fell back to the ground a few feet away from her.

Sam whipped around toward her, pointing at the Impala. “The Borax! In the trunk!” he screamed.

_“What?!”_

The other monsters in suits started to close them in. “The _Borax_! Grab the _Borax_!”

Liv fought back bile in her confusion, as she pulled herself off the ground and onto her shaky legs. She would do as she was instructed even though she stumbled backward a few steps first before tearing her eyes away from Sam battling the monsters. She squeezed her eyes tight, still unable to believe what was happening, but only a second later she was sprinting for the car.

The trunk was still open from when Dean was digging supplies out of it. Her eyes scanned the supplies frantically as panic grew in her chest. Off in the other direction, further up the lake, she heard Dean’s gruff shouting and the roars of other monsters. She couldn’t make out what he was saying but it only made her unstable hands shake more. Then there was the sound of Dean’s shotgun.

_What the hell is going on!_

The tub of blue cleaning solution sat crammed off to the side near the back and was so heavy it was hard for her to lift, but seeing Sam get struck down out of the corner of her eye sent a surge of adrenaline through her body and helped her prise the solution from the trunk. She hoisted it up over her head, securing it on her shoulder, and rushed as quickly as she could to Sam’s side. Thank god, he had snapped back like elastic from the blow Liv had witnessed, unscathed but for a trickle of blood making its way down the side of his head. The ground around him was littered with leviathan limbs. The tattered monsters now all transformed their faces from men to growling, snarling creatures with shark-like teeth as they circled Sam. He stood sure-footed, like a cat ready to spring, haunches prickling, senses heightened.

The Borax fell from Liv’s grasp to the ground behind Sam with a dull thud that was loud enough to draw one of the leviathan’s attention. All she saw was a flash of teeth, catching a whiff of stale, decaying breath, before the force of a collision knocked her flat on her stomach. She blinked, disoriented, and as her eyes refocused, she saw a leviathan head roll across the grass right past her face, still growling and foaming at the mouth. Terrified, she flipped herself back away from the head with another shriek. To her left, the leviathan’s body fell under Sam’s knife.

He was standing over her, black-goo-caked machete in one hand, tub of borax in the other. It was like nothing for him to hold its weight with one hand. Before the other monsters could spring, he flipped his wrist and the Borax lid was freed, spraying cleaning solution in sharp slashes in the air as Sam whipped it towards the monsters. Their skin sizzled and hissed as they crumbled beneath it, their cries of agony echoing across the lake. Liv watched with wide eyes as the monsters finally seemed to become weakened. Sam doused them with the fluid until they were nothing but ashes. Then with a savage flourish, Sam crammed the lip of the tub into the last monster’s mouth. It choked and sizzled until it was also nothing but steaming ash.

In the previous few days, Liv noted that Sam had all the potential in the world to be dangerous - to be lethal - with that height and breadth, that sharp brain firing on all cylinders; but she couldn’t imagine what it would take to get him to that point. He was powerfully large yet had been gentle and soft spoken at every turn. But seeing him standing solid, backlit by the streetlights of the park, holding a machete covered in sludge, blood streaming steadily down his face and curving around his neck, hair blown back and disheveled from landing no less than five killing blows without hesitation, his chest heaving ragged breaths as he scanned the area looking for more monsters to destroy, sent a tremor down her spine. Her appraisal had not been wrong and the transformation had been astounding. How this was the same man who earlier that day had so delicately shaken a ninety-two year old’s hand was beyond her realm of understanding.

“No! No! Forget it!” came a male voice shouting from further up the lake, the direction in which Dean and Ives had gone. Sam and Liv’s attention snapped towards what looked like two black silhouettes of men a ways off in the darkness. The feedback of a walkie talkie sounded before the voice responded again. “Negative. We’re aborting! We’re getting the hell out of here! We’ve acquired one of’em at least!”

The figures began to retreat quickly towards a car parked up the street. Apparently Liv wasn’t the only one with shivers up her spine after seeing what Sam could do. These guys were running scared. The car’s headlights suddenly ignited and the engine roared to life. As they moved, it was clear the black figures of the men were carrying shapes of two other unconscious people.

Sam didn’t waste a second. As if killing the monsters and chasing down the owner of that voice were one fluid motion, Sam was off with long, determined strides towards his target. There was no way Liv could have ever kept up with him in that state, even if he hadn’t had a head start, but she pulled herself off the ground as quickly as she could and tried her damnedest to stay close as she tore after him.

Two figures Liv was certain were more leviathans were almost overtaken by Sam, but after they threw Dean in the trunk and Ives in the backseat they were just able to speed away as Sam’s body slammed into the side of the vehicle.  He jerked at the door handle, rattling it as fast as he could with all his strength before the car tore it from his grip, tires throwing dust and gravel up at him as it went. Liv arrived on the scene just in time for Sam to spin around from the car’s wake with both hands up in his hair.

 _“Fuck!”_ he swore, the vein across his forehead bulging. The wound on his head hadn’t stopped bleeding and it looked like the car door might have taken one of his fingernails off.

Liv bent over with her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath, which she had lost not only from running but from the terror that consumed her. She had never seen anything like those monsters before and had felt Sam’s scream in her core. _They have Ives. They have Dean._ She had no idea what the next move was. If Sam was shaken, she wasn’t sure what she should feel.

Sam seemed to gather himself quickly after his outburst. As the blood continued to pour down the side of his face, he took in three deep breaths and contained his initial panic. He assumed an expression of cold determination.

“Are you alright?” he spoke in a monotone.

“I’m alive,” Liv replied. Her voice was shaky and cracked. Her head throbbed and the skin around her right eye was tender like she had been punched in the face.

“Can you--?”

She stood straight up and took in one sharp breath. “I’m good.”

He nodded in reply and without another word Sam was off back towards the Impala with Liv keeping in stride with him as they went.  Sam opened the car door with such force that it shook the thing. Liv felt it wobble as she replaced the half empty tub of Borax in the trunk and slammed it shut.  As if he’d done this hundreds of times and despite his size, Sam ducked under the steering wheel searching for the right wires to jump-start the car. Within seconds, the engine was ignited.

“You don’t have a set of your own keys?” Liv blurted out as she sank into the front seat, the first aid kit from the trunk in her lap. It was a stupid question. She instantly regretted it. But she kind of felt like a wreck, she was pretty sure she was slightly in shock, her head was throbbing from being slammed into the ground, and her nerves were frayed. Her ability to filter suffered.

“No,” he replied with no explanation as he sat up in the seat and slammed the door closed behind him, tossing the crowbar he retrieved from the ground in the backseat. He jerked his overshirt off and wrapped it around his bloody hand, then kicked the Impala into gear and the car was speeding up the road in the direction the leviathan’s vehicle had gone.

Liv didn’t bother buckling her seat belt, her shaky hands fumbling at the lid of the kit. When she finally was able to prise the thing open, she found some old bandages, gauze, and a nearly empty bottle of peroxide. She looked up to study Sam’s bloody face, his eyes laser focused on the road. Her eyebrows pulled together in concern. How he hadn’t started to black out yet was also beyond her realm of understanding.

Sam steered the Impala with all the precision possible while whipping through the San Francisco streets, but it wasn’t long before it was clear that --with the traffic, the stop lights, the one-way streets, and the construction-- they were not going to find the leviathans this way. Somehow they had ended up stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge, where night construction had forced all traffic into one lane, and the trail after Dean’s and Ives’ captors was officially cold. Sam still looked laser-focused, but the vein on his forehead was bulging worse than ever as he followed close behind the car in front of him. When the bridge finally ended, Sam pulled off into the empty parking lot of Vista Point.

The moonlight rippled across the bay, the sound of waves washing against the pillars of the bridge could be heard, a cool breeze blew across the abandoned lot and into the open windows of the Impala, but it wasn’t pleasant. The sweet sounds of the bay were tainted with the chill of defeat and the lack of a next move. Sam brought his injured hand to his chest, but instead of unwrapping it and grabbing the first aid kit, he pressed the thumb of his other hand into his palm.

“Sam.” Liv spoke softly. “Are you okay?” She knew he wasn’t okay, his brother had just been abducted by monsters. But still, she needed to know how to help him.

Sam started at the sound of her voice breaking the silence like he had forgotten she was there. He glanced into the rearview mirror, then shook his head. Liv glanced to the back seat following Sam’s line of sight. No one was back there. Of course no one was back there. Liv’s growing concern tightened around her like it was a physical thing. She began to unpack the bandages and gauze from the kit.

“This is going to hurt,” she informed Sam, dabbing a wad of gauze into the mouth of the peroxide.

Sam glanced sideways at her. “I’m fine. I don’t need it.”

“You’re bleeding from the head--”

“I’ve had worse, really, I don’t--”

“Sam, c’mon, you need--!”

“I need to focus on finding my brother!” The volume of that last bit rattled the dashboard, as though he was trying to talk over someone. The weird thing was Liv didn’t feel like it was her he was trying to drown out. Sam breathed out methodically through his nose, pressing his thumb harder into his palm. “I’m sorry, but I need to find Dean. Then we can take care of the bumps and bruises.”

There was an awkward silence that fell between them. Sam was much worse off than he had implied. Maybe he was human after all. Dried blood had started congealing in his hair. If someone had happened upon him right then, without knowing that the wound was just a cut near his hairline, they might have passed out at the sight of him: covered in glistening red from the top of his forehead all the way down his neck, a small stream of it still dripping across his collarbone and disappearing into the blackness of his undershirt. It was pretty horrifying. But even though Liv had never seen leviathans before, she had seen a head wound before - had in fact sustained a few of her own from time to time - so she scooted closer to him, gauze in hand, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Her proximity seemed to sober him a bit from whatever haze he was in, his expression shifting into an apologetic frown. He turned to her with his elbow resting on the steering wheel, signifying that she was allowed to address his wound. Sam sucked air through his teeth as she pressed the gauze to his open cut.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s okay,” he replied. “Half the time we use whiskey. This actually hurts less.”

She tilted his head towards her to give him a look of disbelief. He cocked one eyebrow, lightly shrugging. It was true and there was nothing more to be said about it.

She dabbed the cotton to his forehead over and over again until she had to discard it and use a new wad of gauze. When she had gotten the bleeding to slow nearly to a stop --and had made a pile of discarded gauze wads in the process-- she hung over into the backseat and grabbed a half empty water bottle from the floorboard. She used the water and a rag from the dashboard to mop as much of the blood from Sam’s face as she could. When she was done, the damage didn’t look so bad. She felt his eyes on her as she worked. She wasn’t sure why, but she kept avoiding making eye contact.

“There,” she said finally, placing a bandage across the top of Sam’s head and sitting back. She let her thumb drag across his cheekbone on its way down away from his face. She didn’t understand how, but he was still so beautiful, his dressed wound delicately illuminated by the moonlight, apprehension so palpable she could nearly taste it.

Before her hand dropped completely away, Sam caught it in his own. “Thanks,” he said.

She nodded in reply, squeezing his fingers. “You knew what those things were,” she blurted out. Her filter was still not fully intact.

“Yeah,” Sam admitted, untangling his fingers from hers to absently explore the bandage on his head, checking it out in the rearview mirror. “We’ve dealt with them before.”

“What are they?”

“Still not completely sure. But they’re called leviathans and they can take the form of any human being as long as they get their DNA.”

Liv felt the blood drain from her face.

“There aren’t many ways to destroy them. We tried everything, and then one day--”

“You tried cleaning them?”

Sam chuckled with genuine humor. “Not exactly. But turns out, Borax works.”

“Is that why they took Dean?” she asked. “And Ives? Because you know their weakness? Are you guys the ‘targets’ they were after?”

He shrugged. “It’s true, we’re not their favorite people. And if they’re trying to track us down, one way to attract our attention might be to lure us in with cases like the Lady of Stow Lake…”

“So this case, this entire time, it wasn’t a vengeful spirit or anything? It was these monsters making it look like a case just to get you two--?”

“It’s a possibility. It would explain why you and Ives were getting so many calls about other cases.”

“But all over? Across the entire country?” she sputtered.

“They definitely have the man-power and organization to pull something like that off.”

Liv found herself having to fight off another wave of nausea. How could something like leviathans exist without her knowing, and at such great numbers? And who were these Winchesters, so important that a whole race of monsters had a vendetta against them big enough to orchestrate something this intricate just to track them down?

Just then, Liv was startled by a buzzing on the inside of her boot. Frightened, she jumped straight up with a yelp, knocking her head against the ceiling of the car. With a groan her hand came up to her forehead as she reached for the phone tucked behind the laces of her boot. The notifications buzzed on. Sam, likewise startled by the commotion, brought his hands up as if to offer help, although he had no idea what was needed.

“It’s Ives!” she exclaimed, still holding her head.

“He’s texting?!” Sam asked, leaning over to see the phone screen.

“No,” she replied, scrolling with wide eyes, “but he took my phone last time we worked together and installed an app he created. He wouldn’t tell me what it did. He said he wanted to test it out but hoped we wouldn’t have to use it.”

“What does it do?”

“We never tested it so I didn’t know then, but--!” She handed him the phone. It was a map with coordinates being highlighted as a flag that appeared to have an anime version of Ives’ face on it moved across the screen.

“They’re in the Muir Woods!” The strain in Sam’s shoulders and in the lines of his face were immediately erased at the sight of the map and the little icon that indicated where Dean most likely was. “That’s not far at all!” Now full of eagerness where he had been all tension, Sam glanced up at Liv, ready to discuss their next move; but he hesitated. She was still clearly shaken and most likely overwhelmed. As much as Sam hated to admit it, stuff like leviathans and having an entire world of monsters holding a grudge specifically against him had become a pretty standard part of the Winchester life. He couldn’t imagine it was the same for Liv.

“Look,” Sam started. “I know this is not what you signed up for when you started this case. I get it if you want to just walk away at this point.” She nodded slowly. It’s not like the thought hadn’t already crossed her mind a few times when she was face-to-face with those razor sharp teeth. Learning how deep the whole thing went only made everything seem that much more terrifying. “But,” Sam continued, “I have to go after my brother and I have to start right now. Every second that ticks by is a second closer to the end of the line for Dean.”

Bowing out was only ever just a thought. The monsters had Ives, too, after all. She couldn’t walk away from him. Or Dean for that matter, even though it was pretty clear Dean didn’t like her. She wouldn’t walk away. But more than anything, she couldn’t imagine leaving Sam alone in the middle of this after everything. It’s not that she didn’t think he could figure it out. The man she saw single-handedly take down a five-monster ambush, sustaining only a scratch in the process, was just the kind of man who could rescue a hunter or two from this situation, but still. Sam retained a vulnerability about him that also made her want to stay nearby and make sure everything turned out alright.

She cleared her dry throat. “What do we need to do?”

Sam smiled briefly in surprise before replying. “We’re going to need a lot more Borax.”

**\---**

Dean opened his eyes to slits, his head throbbing, the taste of blood in his mouth. He couldn’t see much, just the fuzzy shapes of his own legs sprawled out on the ground in front of him in the darkness. He tried to move his arms but found they were bound. As consciousness returned to him more fully, it became clear that he was actually tied to an enormous tree with thick rope cutting into his arms.

_Son of bitch._

“You saw it, don’t pretend you didn’t,” came a hushed voice. Dean blinked his blurred vision away until he could focus on three men standing a few yards to his left, their faces illuminated by the faint moonlight shining in between the branches of gargantuan red woods. They seemed to be in a forest full of them. The man continued nervously. “Can’t we just kill this Winchester and get the hell out of dodge?”

“And leave the big one behind to come after us for offing his brother?” said another one. “That’s worse! We need the other one to come to us on our terms so we can kill’em both--”

The first spoke up again. “I know Roman’s orders, but--?”

“If you know his orders then I don’t know why you’re questioning anything.” The tallest of the three men, who seemed to be a leader of sorts, cut the first off savagely. “Roman’s word is final. The job is to get the Winchesters. We finally got one and we’re not leaving until we get the other one, too.”

“But the rest...!” stuttered the first. “They...they’re fucking dead!”

“If you don’t stop your whining,” the tall leader barked, “I’ll bib you right here, right now myself!”

The frightened leviathan cowered back and fell silent.

“Speaking of,” said the second leviathan. “I’m starving.” He loosened his tie. “You sure we can’t eat this extra one?” He pointed towards the tree where Dean was tied. It was then that Dean realized Ives was also secured to the enormous tree, right next to him. His head hung limply to the side, resting on his own shoulder, his glasses cracked and askew, but at the words _‘eat the extra one’_ Dean saw Ives start to tremble. He was playing dead. Dean rolled his eyes.

“Eh,” the leader shrugged. “Save him for after. Just to be sure we don’t need him.”

The second nodded as if that was reasonable.

Dean struggled against the ropes, pulling his knees up to try and leverage himself against them and start finding a way to get free. He wasn’t sure what the tall leviathan meant by _‘after,’_ but he didn’t like the sound of it.  He hoped his struggling wouldn’t draw their attention to him as he moved as quietly and slowly as he could.

“Dude!” croaked Ives, with hysterical urgency. “Cut it out!”

“What? No!” Dean bit back in a hoarse whisper.

“They’re gonna notice--!”

“You want outta here or not?” Ives’ bottom lip trembled and Dean was pretty sure he heard him whimper. “Playing possum ain’t gonna do either of us any good! The longer we sit here, the less of a chance there is for us to make a run for it! Now shuddup and follow my lead.” Dean went back to trying to de-tree himself until he realized the leviathans had overheard their bickering. The three men --the three monsters-- approached. Dean thought he could hear the low rumble of sinister growls emanating from their chests as they grew nearer. The hungry one was sniggering.

“Doesn’t look like the small one’s much use to the Winchester, either,” he said. “You sure I can’t just go ahead and eat him now?”

“Al _right,”_ Dean announced. “No one’s eatin’ anybody.” Speaking up made the throbbing in his head worse, but he played his grimace off like a glare.

“We thought you’d be out all night,” teased the tall one. The scared one hung back silently but looked the most angry of them all. “Kind of hoped for it. Bait is so much easier to deal with when it’s unconscious.”

“Bait, huh?” Dean asked. “I’m flattered but don’t pretty blond girls usually work better in bad mob movies, like the one you guys seem to think you’re starring in right now?” Dean nodded towards them like he was indicating their suits. He engaged the leviathan’s in the hopes that it would keep them talking. He had gotten out of stickier situations before, he thought. Right? Probably, at least. He just needed them distracted while he worked out how to get free.

“You’ll work just fine for our goal,” said the leader.

“So you do think I’m pretty?”

“Shut up!” snapped the first leviathan.

Dean chuckled. His head hurt but at least he was giving his captors a hard time while they had him. He liked to seem unbothered in situations like this. “Sore spot?” Dean asked, slowly twisting his wrist towards a crack in the tree, hoping he could slowly squeeze his arm free while keeping the monsters busy.

“He doesn’t need to speak. Can’t I take his jaw at the very least?”

“No,” said the leader with finality. “He’d probably accidentally bleed to death. We need him alive at least until his brother gets here.”

“You guys waiting for Sammy?” Dean asked, wrist nearly free. “Because we have a pact, man. If one of us is taken, the other keeps moving. He knows I can take care of myself. You’re wasting your time.” The monsters were going to keep him alive at least until Sam came after them but Dean had no idea how long that would take or if Sam even had any idea where they were, so he’d like to take things as much into his own hands as he could.

“Save it,” said the leader. “We know the best way to get one of you is to abduct the other. This was always Plan B.”

“What exactly was Plan A, then?” Dean asked. He felt the ropes start to actually draw blood but he kept moving his arm. “Why the hell am I here and what the hell’s the statue at Stow Lake have to do with any of this?”

“It has nothing to do with us or you, idiot,” barked the first. “All of this was a trap.”

“A trap?”

“Orders came from the top, from Dick Roman, himself,” answered the leader. “We are to get rid of the Winchesters. Mr. Roman’s thought was why go after you if we can get you to come to us? So...”

“Wait, so you staged the accidents at Golden Gate Park?”

“Not just there,” answered the second with a tone of pride. “All over.”

The lead leviathan stepped forward. “We got organized, did some research, and orchestrated some legends in a few hotspots all over the country knowing you’d catch a whiff.  Wasn’t hard. In fact, humans are obsessed with this ‘urban legends’ shit.” He rolled his eyes. Dean had to admit leviathans were a lot scarier than the run-of-the-mill urban legend, so he could see why they’d be unimpressed. “They did most of our work for us. We only had to use one website that documented all the most famous tales. From there we just played out the stories in key locations like the legends say. We didn’t even have to make sure they were played out accurately. The sensationalism of the media and imaginative nature of human hearsay filled in the gaps.”  

“We just made sure there were fatalities,” added the hungry one. “The more deaths, the higher likelihood you guys will show up. You two have a real hero complex.”

“Something it looks like your friend here really resents,” said the first leviathan, pointing at the despair on Ives’ face with a laugh. It was the first time Dean saw that one smile. He didn’t like it.

“Well, I have to say,” Dean sighed. His blood was soaked into the rope, but it was about to pay off. He had nearly freed his left arm. “I joked about feeling flattered earlier but you bunch of chompers going to all that trouble just to track me down? This really does make a guy feel special.”

“I can’t believe this!” Ives shouted. All four of the others snapped their attention to him. “Liv had to get mixed up with the only two guys in the fucking world with a legion of monsters after them!”

The leviathans laughed. “I’m glad I didn’t go ahead and eat that one,” said the hungry one. “He’s funny.”

Dean finally slipped his wrist out of the rope, but the ropes held his torso tight to the massive trunk of the tree and reaching for his pocket knife was a no-go unless he was going to reveal he was half free. He’d have to move slower still.

The white noise of a walkie talkie buzzed on one of the leviathan’s belts. They all straightened up like their dad had walked in on them playing video games when they should have been doing homework.

_“Confirm: is the mission complete?”_

The lead leviathan brought the radio up to his mouth, apprehension in his eyes. “Negative. We’ve still got one. Waiting on the other. Over.”

_“What’s the problem? Were the Winchesters sighted or not? Over.”_

“Um… affirmative. They were sighted. I’ve got one in sight, right now. Ov...over.”

_“Still alive?”_

“...Yeah.”

There was a pause while the three leviathan’s glanced at each other nervously.

 _“Transmission coming in from Mr. Roman…”_ There was a rasp, some more white noise and then a new voice. _“FINISH THE JOB.”_ All three leviathans blanched away from the radio. _“YOU HAD THEM BOTH IN YOUR SIGHT AND YOU LOST THEM. IF YOU DON’T COME BACK WITH A MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED YOU’RE ALL GETTING BIBBED. AND I’LL BE THE ONE TO DO IT! Over.”_

“Wow, looks like you are in pretty big trouble,” Dean smirked.

“Shut up!” they snapped back in unision.

“You guys really flubbed this one up--” Dean’s jab was cut short by the first leviathan’s fist across his jaw. That especially did not help the throbbing in his head. His vision was blurred around the corners of his eyes when he looked back up at the monsters. Blood was trickling from his nose and he was pretty sure he was starting to hallucinate. A shape that seemed to be a giant turtle-like man was sneaking up behind the three leviathans. Dean shook his head even though it sent sharp jabs of pain through his temples. He blinked a few times, too, trying to erase the image but it wouldn’t go away. Instead it came into better focus, and it wasn’t a turtle-creature at all. It was Sam wearing an industrial-sized janitorial-pack of Borax on his back, holding the detachable spray extension cocked and ready in his hands.

As soon as it registered what Dean was seeing, it was like he’d never suffered a blow to the head. The cheekiness that had gotten through so many similar situations poured from his mouth like it was second nature. “You can hit me as many times as you want, jackass,” he said. “That won’t change the fact that your boss wanted me and my brother and you only got me.” The leviathans’ faces flushed with a very human blush of rage. “I’d hate to be you three when your superiors find out you not only failed to hogtie us both, but the one you _did_ get got free right under your nose.” He brought up his free, bloody arm and waved at them.

The roars that the three monsters produced shook the red woods around them, but as terrifying as the sound was, it didn’t matter. Sam used that moment to strike, unleashing the powerful gush of cleaning solution from the gun-like sprayer in his hands. Ives and Dean felt the rope that held them captive fall loose to their waists .Liv stepped out from behind the tree with a wink, holding her hunting knife. The leviathans hissed and screeched against the gush of the Borax, steam rising off their skin as they burned. The first lunged at Dean in his last ditch effort to inflict some sort of damage, but before he could lay a claw on him, Dean had his knife out of its holster and through the monster’s neck in one fluid motion. His head was still throbbing, but that felt pretty satisfying.

When the three leviathan’s were nothing but piles of hissing steam, Sam clicked the spray extension back into place on his back, his eyes scanning the ground where the monsters fell to be sure they were really gone. Liv was supporting Ives, hoisting him up with his arm around his shoulders. He kicked at the steaming piles feebly as if to say _“and stay out!”_ Liv tried to hide her amusement.  

 _“Come in. Come in.”_ A walkie talkie rattled against a rock on the forest floor. Dean snatched it up. _“Confirm. Is the mission complete?”_

“This is a message for your dick of a boss,” Dean growled into the radio. “It’ll take a lot better plan than that to get rid of us. Over and out, assholes.”

**\---**

After rearranging things in the Impala trunk in order to properly load the new giant tub of Borax into it, everyone piled in. The Impala was only parked a few hundred feet up the road but it turned out as the four hustled to the car, Dean was not doing well enough to drive back to the hotel. Liv and Ives climbed into the backseat while Dean sat shotgun as Sam took driver. The rumble of gravel and eventually asphalt under the wheels triggered a feeling of relief. They had figured this case out, as bizarre as it had ended up, and no one else had been hurt in the process. Unless one were to count Dean’s head. But overall, it wasn’t a bad score.

“How’d you get the borax?” Ives asked, curiosity getting the better of him. Dean flinched at the volume of Ives’ voice right in his ear.

“Liv thought quick on her feet,” Sam replied.

“State-mandated Janitorial inspection,” Liv clarified. “There was a warehouse not far from the Bridge we stopped off at. The ‘inspector’ had to confiscate the whole of the cleaning solution from their stock to be tested for clarity, according to Janitorial code standard #E5619.” Ives nodded, impressed. “But what about you, Ives?” Liv tapped his shoulder. “How did you send the coordinates to me if you were tied up?”

He cleared his throat as if he were about to get into something really technical. “The app is setup to track where I am at all times. Every fifteen minutes it prompts me to punch in a seven digit code. If I don’t punch it in, it sends my coordinate to whoever I pre-log into the ap to contact.”

“And you chose me?” Liv crooned with faux affection.

“Only because I had to,” Ives grumbled. “I’m glad we all survived and everything, and that you guys saved my ass. That was pretty cool, but… let’s just never hang out again. Okay?”

“Yeah, right back at you, little man,” Dean grumbled. He leaned his head against the passenger window, placing the bruised part of his forehead against the cool glass. “Now would you guys kindly shut the fuck up?”

Liv leaned towards the front seat so she could talk quietly to Sam without further disturbing Dean. “I think being associated with you guys was a little too intense for Ives,” she whispered with a grin.

“But not for you?” Sam replied, softly. He glanced back at her in the rearview mirror.

“It was definitely more than I bargained for. But I can take the heat.” She could see Sam’s eyes smiling in his reflection. “I think once I got the hang of it we made a pretty good team.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

**\---**

There were a few things to do before leaving town the next day. Sam felt it was imperative to get Liv a tub or two of her own Borax while Dean wanted to be sure they replaced the crowbar “that jawa” stole from them. Liv couldn’t be sure if Dean called Ives a jawa because Ives was short or because Ives had driven off with the weapon early that morning with no intention of returning it. The only thing Liv knew for sure about the reference was that Ives wouldn’t be selling or trading it on Tatooine, though she wouldn’t be surprised if he used it for some technology he was currently developing.

Sam seemed to have recharged overnight but the same couldn’t be said about Dean. He was grumpy and in a foul mood. Liv got the impression he wasn’t into the idea of spending another morning with her. All he seemed to want to do after replacing the crowbar was get the hell out of San Francisco. He stood to the side of Liv’s car with his arms crossed and his hip popped out, his very posture rejecting their location. They were in the parking lot of the San Fran grocery store to which Sam had dragged him in order to help Liv load up on Borax before they headed out.

“I really appreciate this,” Liv said as she and Sam crammed the last of the five large Borax containers into her car.

“No problem,” Sam insisted. “Now you know what’s out there, you need to be prepared.”

She looked the boys over. Sam’s head was still bandaged, Dean’s arm was wrapped up and taped, and she had a nasty blue and yellow bruise around her eye. They were quite the rag-tag little group of weirdos going grocery shopping for cleaning supplies on a such a crisp, lovely morning.

Dean sighed impatiently.

“Well, I guess this is it,” she said, taking the hint. “I was thinking…” She pulled a pen from her purse and extended her hand towards Dean. “I know it’s not your style but maybe I can give you guys my info and we can work together in the future--”

“No thanks,” Dean cut her off. “We’re good.”

Liv blinked at him.

“Good to meet you. Everything turned out alright. Let’s let it end here.” And with that, Dean turned on his heels and headed for their car. “C’mon, Sammy,” he called over his shoulder.

Liv watched him walk away a little astonished. She turned to Sam with a laugh. “ _Well_ , then!”

Sam rolled his eyes, exasperatedly. “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “Don’t take it personally, he’s…”

“Grumpy.” Liv smiled to assure him it didn’t hurt her feeling at all. In fact, she thought it was kind of hilarious.

"Last night was a rough job all around."

Liv couldn't nod enough in agreement.

“Sorry about your eye, by the way,” Sam added, bending close to see her face better.

“Oh, it’s fine, I--”

Her sentence stopped short in her throat as Sam reached up to sweep his thumb across her cheek just under the bruise as he studied the damage. Then his hand trailed off to the side of her head. She felt her heart nearly stop at the thought that he might brush her hair aside and tuck it back, but instead, as if from nowhere, a piece of paper appeared in his hand like he had pulled it from behind her ear. Liv burst out laughing.

“So you _do_  still like magic.”

Sam shrugged, smirking. “Comes in handy from time to time.” He held out the paper. Scrawled across it in his slender handwriting was a phone number.

“Clearly,” she laughed, snatching it from him.

“Call us if you need anything.” Sam paused, then added, “And get a machete.”

“Will do. And, not that you would--” She grabbed his hand, the injured one, and turned it over so his palm was facing up and scribbled her number across the middle. His hand was so large there was plenty of room to add her first and last name, too. “--but if for some reason you need me, you can call me, too.”

“Thanks,” he chuckled, reviewing what she had written across the lines in his hand, a spot normally reserved for his compulsion to press his thumb into his palm when he was having a bad time. Liv saw something in his eyes as he read her name and number, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it meant.

There was a second of awkwardness as they hesitated to settle on goodbye.

“It was great meeting you guys!”

“Yeah. Same. Take care of yourself.”

“You too…”

“I’ll see you.”

Then Sam headed towards Dean, who was hanging out of the Impala front seat, honking the horn. Liv watched on, a little pang shooting through her chest. She wondered if she’d really ever see them again, and the uncertainty made her suddenly very sad. She hoped whatever was plaguing Sam internally would let up; and that the brother he had worked so hard to rescue the night before would be supportive if it didn’t.

Liv caught Dean’s eye, waved goodbye, and didn’t turn to go until the Impala had whipped a U-turn in the middle of the lot and disappeared from her sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me SO LONG to finish this one, but it's finally done, hah! Thanks for waiting around and reading. I appreciate you all! <3


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